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THE BLUE 
SCARAB 


R. AUSTIN FREEMAN 

AUTHOR OF 

“THE SINGING BONE,” ETC. 



NEW YORK 

DODD, MEAD AND COMPANY 
1924 










Copyright, 1923, 

By DODD, MEAD AND COMPANY, Inc. 



PRINTED IN THE U. S. A. BY 

<£uum & IBobtn Companp 

BOOK MANUFACTURERS 
RAHWAY NEW JERSEY 

M 15 *24 

©C1A7C6765 ' 




CONTENTS 


CHAPTER PAGE 


I 

The Blue Scarab. 

i 

II 

The Case of the White Foot-prints . 

39 

III 

The New Jersey Sphinx 

90 

IV 

The Touchstone. 

129 

V 

A Fisher of Men. 

163 

VI 

The Stolen Ingots . . . 

200 

VII 

The Funeral Pyre . 

238 




















r ■, ,>.y» 




THE BLUE SCARAB 


r 


* .*» 






























THE BLUE SCARAB 


I 

THE BLUE SCARAB 

M EDICO-LEGAL practice is largely concerned 
with crimes against the person, the details of 
which are often sordid, gruesome and un¬ 
pleasant. Hence the curious and romantic case of the 
Blue Scarab (though really outside our specialty) 
came as somewhat of a relief. But to me it is of 
interest principally as illustrating two of those re¬ 
markable gifts which made my friend, Thorndyke, 
unique as an investigator: his uncanny power of 
picking out the one essential fact at a glance, and his 
capacity to produce, when required, inexhaustible 
stores of unexpected knowledge of the most out-of- 
the-way subjects. 

It was late in the afternoon when Mr. James Blow- 
grave arrived, by appointment, at our chambers, ac¬ 
companied by his daughter, a rather strikingly pretty 
girl of about twenty-two; and when we had mutually 
introduced ourselves, the consultation began without 
preamble. 

“I didn’t give any details in my letter to you,” said 
Mr. Blowgrave. “I thought it better not to, for fear 


2 


THE BLUE SCARAB 


you might decline the case. It is really a matter of 
a robbery, but not quite an ordinary robbery. There 
are some unusual and rather mysterious features in 
the case. And as the police hold out very little hope, 
I have come to ask if you will give me your opinion 
on the case and perhaps look into it for me. But first 
I had better tell you how the affair happened. 

“The robbery occurred just a fortnight ago, about 
half-past nine o’clock in the evening. I was sitting 
in my study with my daughter, looking over some 
things that I had taken from a small deed-box, when 
a servant rushed in to tell us that one of the outbuild¬ 
ings was on fire. Now my study opens by a French 
window on the garden at the back, and, as the out¬ 
building was in a meadow at the side of the garden, 
I went out that way, leaving the French window 
open; but before going I hastily put the things back 
in the deed-box and locked it. 

“The building—which I used partly as a lumber 
store and partly as a workshop—was well alight and 
the whole household was already on the spot, the boy 
working the pump and the two maids carrying the 
buckets and throwing water on the fire. My daughter 
and I joined the party and helped to carry the buckets 
and take out what goods we could reach from the 
burning building. But it was nearly half an hour 
before we got the fire completely extinguished, and 
then my daughter and I went to our rooms to wash 
and tidy ourselves up. We returned to the study 
together, and when I had shut the French window my 
daughter proposed that we should resume our inter- 


THE BLUE SCARAB 


3 


rupted occupation. Thereupon I took out of my 
pocket the key of the deed-box and turned to the 
cabinet on which the box always stood. 

“But there was no deed-box there! 

“For a moment I thought I must have moved it, 
and cast my eyes round the room in search of it. But 
it was nowhere to be seen, and a moment’s reflection 
reminded me that I had left it in its usual place. The 
only possible conclusion was that during our absence 
at the fire, somebody must have come in by the win¬ 
dow and taken it. And it looked as if that somebody 
had deliberately set fire to the outbuilding for the 
express purpose of luring us all out of the house.” 

“That is what the appearances suggest,” Thorndyke 
agreed. “Is the study window furnished with a blind 
or curtains?” 

“Curtains,” replied Mr. Blowgrave. “But they 
were not drawn. Any one in the garden could have 
seen into the room; and the garden is easily accessible 
to an active person who could climb over a low wall.” 

“So far, then,” said Thorndyke, “the robbery 
might be the work of a casual prowler who had got 
into the garden and watched you through the window, 
and assuming that the things you had taken from the 
box were of value, seized an easy opportunity to make 
off with them. Were the things of any considerable 
value?” 

“To a thief they were of no value at all. There 
were a number of share certificates, a lease, one or 
two agreements, some family photographs and a 
small box containing an old letter and a scarab. 


4 


THE BLUE SCARAB 


Nothing worth stealing, you see, for the certificates 
were made out in my name and were therefore un- 
negotiable.” 

“And the scarab ?” 

“That may have been lapis luzuli, but more prob¬ 
ably it was a blue glass imitation. In any case it was 
of no considerable value. It was about an inch and 
a half long. But before you come to any conclusion, 
I had better finish the story. The robbery was on 
Tuesday, the 7th of June. I gave information to the 
police, with a description of the missing property, but 
nothing happened until Wednesday, the 15 th, when 
I received a registered parcel bearing the Southamp¬ 
ton postmark. On opening it I found, to my aston¬ 
ishment, the entire contents of the deed-box, with the 
exception of the scarab, and this rather mysterious 
communication.” 

He took from his pocket-book and handed to 
Thorndyke an ordinary envelope addressed in type¬ 
written characters, and sealed with a large, elliptical 
seal, the face of which was covered with minute 
hieroglyphics. 

“This,” said Thorndyke, “I take to be an impres¬ 
sion of the scarab; and an excellent impression it is.” 

“Yes,” replied Mr. Blowgrave, “I have no doubt 
that it is the scarab. It is about the same size.” 

Thorndyke looked quickly at our client with an 
expression of surprise. “But,” he asked, “don’t you 
recognize the hieroglyphics on it?” 

Mr. Blowgrave smiled deprecatingly. “The fact 


THE BLUE SCARAB 


5 

is,” said he, “I don’t know anything about hiero¬ 
glyphics, but I should say, as far as I can judge, these 
look the same. What do you think, Nellie?” 

Miss Blowgrave looked at the seal—rather vaguely 
—and replied, “I am in the same position. Hiero¬ 
glyphics are to me just funny-looking things that 
don’t mean anything. But these look the same to me 
as those on our scarab, though I expect any other 
hieroglyphics would, for that matter.” 

Thorndyke made no comment on this statement, 
but examined the seal attentively through his lens. 
Then he drew out the contents of the envelope, con¬ 
sisting of two letters, one typewritten and the other 
in a faded brown handwriting. The former he read 
through and then inspected the paper closely, holding 
it up to the light to observe the watermark. 

“The paper appears to be of Belgian manufacture,” 
he remarked, passing it to me. I confirmed this 
observation and then read the letter, which was 
headed “Southampton” and ran thus:— 

Dear old pal, 

I am sending you back some trifles removed in 
error. The ancient document is enclosed with this, but 
the curio is at present in the custody of my respected 
uncle. Hope its temporary loss will not inconvenience 
you, and that I may be able to return it to you later . 
Meanwhile, believe me, 

Your ever affectionate, 

Rudolpho. 



6 


THE BLUE SCARAB 


“Who is Rudolpho?” I asked. 

“The Lord knows/’ replied Mr. Blowgrave. “A 
pseudonym of our absent friend, I presume. He 
seems to be a facetious sort of person.” 

“He does,” agreed Thorndyke. “This letter and 
the seal appear to be what the schoolboys would call 
a leg-pull. But still, this is all quite normal. He 
has returned you the worthless things and has kept 
the one thing that has any sort of negotiable value. 
Are you quite clear that the scarab is not more 
valuable than you have assumed?” 

“Well,” said Mr. Blowgrave, “I have had an ex¬ 
pert opinion on it. I showed it to M. Fouquet, the 
Egyptologist, when he was over here from Brussels 
a few months ago, and his opinion was that it was 
a worthless imitation. Not only was it not a genuine 
scarab, but the inscription was a sham, too; just a 
collection of hieroglyphic characters jumbled together 
without sense or meaning.” 

“Then,” said Thorndyke, taking another look at 
the seal through his lens, “it would seem that Ru¬ 
dolpho, or Rudolpho’s uncle, has got a bad bargain. 
Which doesn’t throw much light on the affair.” 

At this point Miss Blowgrave intervened. “I think, 
father,” said she, “you have not given Dr. Thorndyke 
quite all the facts about the scarab. He ought to be 
told about its connection with Uncle Reuben.” 

As the girl spoke Thorndyke looked at her with a 
curious expression of suddenly awakened interest. 
Later I understood the meaning of that look, but at 


THE BLUE SCARAB 


7 

the time there seemed to me nothing particularly- 
arresting in her words. 

“It is just a family tradition/ 7 Mr. Blowgrave said 
deprecatingly. “Probably it is all nonsense. 77 

“Well, let us have it, at any rate, 77 said Thorndyke. 
“We may get some light from it. 77 

Thus urged, Mr. Blowgrave hemmed a little shyly 
and began: 

“The story concerns my great-grandfather, Silas 
Blowgrave, and his doings during the war with France. 
It seems that he commanded a privateer, of which he 
and his brother Reuben were the joint owners, and 
that in the course of their last cruise, they acquired 
a very remarkable and valuable collection of jewels. 
Goodness knows how they got them; not very hon¬ 
estly, I suspect, for they appear to have been a pair 
of precious rascals. Something has been said about 
the loot from a South American church or cathedral, 
but there is really nothing known about the affair. 
There are no documents. It is mere oral tradition and 
very vague and sketchy. The story goes that when 
they had sold off the ship, they came down to live at 
Shawstead in Hertfordshire, Silas occupying the 
manor house—in which I live at present—and Reuben 
a farm-house adjoining. The bulk of the loot they 
shared out at the end of the cruise, but the jewels 
were kept apart to be dealt with later—perhaps when 
the circumstances under which they had been ac¬ 
quired had been forgotten. However, both men were 
inveterate gamblers, and it seems—according to the 


8 


THE BLUE SCARAB 


testimony of a servant of Reuben’s who overheard 
them—that on a certain night when they had been 
playing heavily, they decided to finish up by playing 
for the whole collection of jewels as a single stake. 
Silas, who had the jewels in his custody, was seen to 
go to the manor house and return to Reuben’s house 
carrying a small, iron-bound chest. 

“Apparently they played late into the night, after 
every one else but the servant had gone to bed, and 
the luck was with Reuben, though it seems probable 
that he gave luck some assistance. At any rate, when 
the play was finished and the chest handed over, Silas 
roundly accused him of cheating, and we may assume 
that a pretty serious quarrel took place. Exactly 
what happened is not clear, for when the quarrel 
began Reuben dismissed the servant, who retired to 
her bedroom in a distant part of the house. But in 
the morning it was discovered that Reuben and the 
chest of jewels had both disappeared, and there were 
distinct traces of blood in the room in which the two 
men had been playing. Silas professed to know 
nothing about the disappearance; but a strong—and 
probably just—suspicion arose that he had murdered 
his brother and made away with the jewels. The 
result was that Silas also disappeared, and for a long 
time his whereabouts was not known even by his wife. 
Later it transpired that he had taken up his abode, 
under an assumed name, in Egypt, and that he had 
developed an enthusiastic interest in the then new 
science of Egyptology—the Rosetta Stone had been 


THE BLUE SCARAB 


9 


deciphered only a few years previously. After a time 
he resumed communication with his wife, but never 
made any statement as to the mystery of his brother’s 
disappearance. A few months before his death he 
visited his home in disguise and he then handed to 
his wife a little sealed packet which was to be deliv¬ 
ered to his only son, William, on his attaining the age 
of twenty-one. That packet contained the scarab and 
the letter which you have taken from the envelope.” 

“Am I to read it?” asked Thorndyke. 

“Certainly, if you think it worth while,” was the 
reply. 

Thorndyke opened the yellow sheet of paper and, 
glancing through the brown and faded writing, read 
aloud: 

Cairo, 4 th March, 1833. 

My dear Son, 

1 am sending you, as my last gift, a valuable 
scarab, and a few words of counsel on which I would 
bid you meditate . Believe me, there is much wis¬ 
dom in the lore of Old Egypt . Make it your own. 
Treasure the scarab as a precious inheritance . Han¬ 
dle it often but show it to none. Give your Uncle 
Reuben Christian burial. It is your duty, and you 
will have your reward. He robbed your father, but 
he shall make restitution. 

Farewell! 

Your affectionate father, 

Silas Blowgrave. 


ID 


THE BLUE SCARAB 


As Thorndyke laid down the letter he looked in¬ 
quiringly at our client. 

“Well,” he said, “here are'some plain instructions. 
How have they been carried out?” 

“They haven’t been carried out at all,” replied 
Mr. Blowgrave. “As to his son William, my grand¬ 
father, he was not disposed to meddle in the matter. 
This seemed to be a frank admission that Silas killed 
his brother and concealed the body, and William 
didn’t choose to reopen the scandal. Besides, the in¬ 
structions are not so very plain. It is all very well 
to say, ‘Give your Uncle Reuben Christian burial,’ 
but where the deuce is Uncle Reuben?” 

“It is plainly hinted,” said Thorndyke, “that 
whoever gives the body Christian burial will stand 
to benefit, and the word ‘restitution’ seems to sug¬ 
gest a clue to the whereabouts of the jewels. Has 
no one thought it worth while to find out where the 
body is deposited?” 

“But how could they?” demanded Blowgrave. “He 
doesn’t give the faintest clue. He talks as if his son 
knew where the body was. And then, you know, even 
supposing Silas did not take the jewels with him, there 
was the question, whose property were they? To 
begin with, they were pretty certainly stolen property, 
though no one knows where they came from. Then 
Reuben apparently got them from Silas by fraud, and 
Silas got them back by robbery and murder. If Wil¬ 
liam had discovered them he would have had to give 
them up to Reuben’s sons, and yet they weren’t 


THE BLUE SCARAB 


ii 


strictly Reuben’s property. No one had an unde¬ 
niable claim to them, even if they could have found 
them.” 

“But that is not the case now,” said Miss Blow- 
grave. 

“No,” said Mr. Blowgrave, in answer to Thorn- 
dyke’s look of inquiry. “The position is quite clear 
now. Reuben’s grandson, my cousin Arthur, has died 
recently, and as he had no children, he has dispersed 
his property. The old farm-house and the bulk of 
his estate he has left to a nephew, but he made a 
small bequest to my daughter and named her as 
the residuary legatee. So that whatever rights Reu¬ 
ben had to the jewels are now vested in her, and on 
my death she will be Silas’s heir, too. As a matter 
of fact,” Mr. Blowgrave continued, “we were dis¬ 
cussing this very question on the night of the robbery. 
I may as well tell you that my girl will be left pretty 
poorly off when I go, for there is a heavy mortgage 
on our property and mighty little capital. Uncle 
Reuben’s jewels would have made the old home secure 
for her if we could have laid our hands on them. 
However, I mustn’t take up your time with our 
domestic affairs.” 

“Your domestic affairs are not entirely irrelevant,” 
said Thorndyke. “But what is it that you want me 
to do in the matter?” 

“Well,” said Blowgrave, “my house has been 
robbed and my premises set fire to. The police can 
apparently do nothing. They say there is no clue at 


12 


THE BLUE SCARAB 


all unless the robbery was committed by somebody 
in the house, which is absurd, seeing that the servants 
were all engaged in putting out the fire. But I want 
the robber traced and punished, and I want to get the 
scarab back. It may be intrinsically valueless, as 
M. Fouquet said, but Silas’s testamentary letter seems 
to indicate that it had some value. As any rate, it is 
an heirloom, and I am loath to lose it. It seems a 
presumptuous thing to ask you to investigate a trump¬ 
ery robbery, but I should take it as a great kindness 
if you would look into the matter.” 

“Cases of robbery pure and simple,” replied Thorn- 
dyke, “are rather alien to my ordinary practice, but 
in this one there are certain curious features that seem 
to make an investigation worth while. Yes, Mr. 
Blowgrave, I will look into the case, and I have some 
hope that we may be able to lay our hands on the 
robber, in spite of the apparent absence of clues. I 
will ask you to leave both these letters for me to 
examine more minutely, and I shall probably want to 
make an inspection of the premises—perhaps to¬ 
morrow.” 

“Whenever you like,” said Blowgrave. “I am de¬ 
lighted that you are willing to undertake the inquiry. 
I have heard so much about you from my friend 
Stalker, of the Griffin Life Assurance Company, for 
whom you have acted on several occasions.” 

“Before you go,” said Thorndyke, “there is one 
point that we must clear up. Who is there besides 
yourselves that knows of the existence of the scarab 


THE BLUE SCARAB 


13 

and this letter and the history attaching to them?” 

“I really can’t say/’ replied Blowgrave. “No one 
has seen them but my cousin Arthur. I once showed 
them to him, and he may have talked about them 
in the family. I didn’t treat the matter as a 
secret.” 

When our visitors had gone we discussed the bear¬ 
ings of the case. 

“It is quite a romantic story,” said I, “and the rob¬ 
bery has its points of interest, but I am rather inclined 
to agree with the police—there is mighty little to 
go on.” 

“There would have been less,” said Thorndyke, “if 
our sporting friend hadn’t been so pleased with him¬ 
self. That typewritten letter was a piece of gratuitous 
impudence. Our gentleman overrated his security and 
crowed too loud.” 

“I don’t see that there is much to be gleaned from 
the letter, all the same,” said I. 

“I am sorry to hear you say that, Jervis,” he ex¬ 
claimed, “because I was proposing to hand the letter 
over to you to examine and report on.” 

“I was only referring to the superficial appear¬ 
ances,” I said hastily. “No doubt a detailed exami¬ 
nation will bring something more distinctive into 
view.” 

“I have no doubt it will,” he said, “and as there 
are reasons for pushing on the investigation as quickly 
as possible, I suggest that you get to work at once. 


i 4 THE BLUE SCARAB 

I shall occupy myself with the old letter and the 
envelope.” 

On this I began my examination without delay, and 
as a preliminary I proceeded to take a facsimile photo- 
graph of the letter by putting it in a large printing- 
frame with a sensitive plate and a plate of clear glass. 
The resulting negative showed not only the type¬ 
written lettering, but also the watermark and wire 
lines of the paper, and a faint grease spot. Next I 
turned my attention to the lettering itself, and here 
I soon began to accumulate quite a number of iden¬ 
tifiable peculiarities. The machine was apparently a 
Corona, fitted with the small “Elite” type, and the 
alignment was markedly defective. The “lower case” 
—or small—“a” was well below the line, although 
the capital “A” appeared to be correctly placed; the 
“u” was slightly above the line, and the small “m” 
was partly clogged with dirt. 

Up to this point I had been careful to manipulate 
the letter with forceps (although it had been handled 
by at least three persons, to my knowledge), and I 
now proceeded to examine it for finger-prints. As I 
could detect none by mere inspection, I dusted the 
back of the paper with finely-powdered fuchsin, and 
distributed the powder by tapping the paper lightly. 
This brought into view quite a number of finger-prints, 
especially round the edges of the letter, and though 
most of them were very faint and shadowy, it was 
possible to make out the ridge pattern well enough 
for our purpose. Having blown off the excess of 


THE BLUE SCARAB 


15 


powder, I took the letter to the room where the large 
copying camera was set up, to photograph it before 
developing the finger-prints on the front. But here 
I found our laboratory assistant, Polton, in posses¬ 
sion, with the sealed envelope fixed to the copying 
easel. 

“I shan’t be a minute, sir,” said he. “The doctor 
wants an enlarged photograph of this seal. I’ve got 
the plate in.” 

I waited while he made his exposure and then pro¬ 
ceeded to take the photograph of the letter, or rather 
of the finger-prints on the back of it. When I had 
developed the negative I powdered the front of the 
letter and brought out several more finger-prints— 
mostly thumbs this time. They were a little difficult 
to see where they were imposed on the lettering, but, 
as the latter was bright blue and the fuchsin powder 
was red, this confusion disappeared in the photo¬ 
graph, in which the lettering was almost invisible 
while the finger-prints were more distinct than they 
had appeared to the eye. This completed my exami¬ 
nation, and when I had verified the make of type¬ 
writer by reference to our album of specimens of 
typewriting, I left the negatives for Polton to dry and 
print and went down to the sitting-room to draw up 
my little report. I had just finished this and was 
speculating on what had become of Thorndyke, when 
I heard his quick step on the stair and a few mo¬ 
ments later he entered with a roll of paper in his 
hand. This he unrolled on the table, fixing it open 


THE BLUE SCARAB 


16 

with one or two lead paper-weights, and I came 
round to inspect it, when I found it to be a sheet of 
the Ordnance map on the scale of twenty-five inches 
to the mile. 

“Here is the Engraves’ place,” said Thorndyke. 
“nearly in the middle of the sheet. This is his house 
—Shawstead Manor—and that will probably be the 
outbuilding that was on fire. I take it that the house 
marked Dingle Farm is the one that Uncle Reuben 
occupied.” 

“Probably,” I agreed. “But I don’t see why you 
wanted this map if you are going down to the place 
itself to-morrow.” 

“The advantage of a map,” said Thorndyke, “is 
that you can see all over it at once and get the lie of 
the land well into your mind; and you can measure 
all distances accurately and quickly with a scale and 
a pair of dividers. When we go down to-morrow, we 
shall know our way about as well as Blowgrave him¬ 
self.” 

“And what use will that be?” I asked. “Where 
does the topography‘come into the case?” 

“Well, Jervis,” he replied, “there is the robber, for 
instance; he came from somewhere and he went some¬ 
where. A study of the map may give us a hint as to 
his movements. But here comes Pol ton ‘with the 
documents/ as poor Miss Flite would say. What 
have you got for us, Polton?” 

“They aren’t quite dry, sir,” said Polton, laying 
four large bromide prints on the table. “There’s the 


THE BLUE SCARAB 


i 7 



/yww 


r W*\\ 

/waaaa 


Tborndyke’s tracing of the impression of the Scarab 


\i v\ w | 

J/WW* —H- AAAAW • - 

((~ 71 . 

*Up 


aaa<VA 








18 THE BLUE SCARAB 

enlargement of the seal—ten by eight, mounted—and 
three unmounted prints of Dr. Jervis’s.” 

Thorndyke looked at my photographs critically. 
“They’re excellent, Jervis,” said he. “The finger¬ 
prints are perfectly legible, though faint. I only hope 
some of them are the right ones. That is my left 
thumb. I don’t see yours. The small one is pre¬ 
sumably Miss Blowgrave’s. We must take her finger¬ 
prints to-morrow, and her father’s, too. Then we 
shall know if we have got any of the robber’s.” He 
ran his eye over my report and nodded approvingly. 
“There is plenty there to enable us to identify the 
typewriter if we can get hold of it, and the paper is 
very distinctive. What do you think of the seal?” 
he added, laying the enlarged photograph before me. 

“It is magnificent,” I replied, with a grin. “Per¬ 
fectly monumental.” 

“What are you grinning at?” he demanded. 

“I was thinking that you seem to be counting your 
chickens in pretty good time,” said I. “You are 
making elaborate preparations to identify the scarab, 
but you are rather disregarding the classical advice 
of the prudent Mrs. Glasse.” 

“I have a presentiment that we shall get that 
scarab,” said he. “At any rate we ought to be in 
a position to identify it instantly and certainly if we 
are able to get a sight of it.” 

“We are not likely to,” said I. “Still, there is no 
harm in providing for the improbable.” 

This was evidently Thorndyke’s view, and he cer- 


THE BLUE SCARAB 


i9 


tainly made ample provision for this most improbable 
contingency; for, having furnished himself with a 
drawing-board and a sheet of tracing-paper, he pinned 
the latter over the photograph on the board and pro¬ 
ceeded, with a fine pen and hectograph ink, to make 
a careful and minute tracing of the intricate and be¬ 
wildering hieroglyphic inscription on the seal. When 
he had finished it he transferred it to a clay dupli¬ 
cator and took off half a dozen copies, one of which 
he handed to me. I looked at it dubiously and re¬ 
marked: “You have said that the medical jurist must 
make all knowledge his province. Has he got to be 
an Egyptologist, too?” 

“He will be the better medical jurist if he is,” was 
the reply, of which I made a mental note for my 
future guidance. But meanwhile Thorndyke’s pro¬ 
ceedings were, to me, perfectly incomprehensible. 
What was his object in making this minute tracing? 
The seal itself was sufficient for identification. I lin¬ 
gered awhile hoping that some fresh development 
might throw a light on the mystery. But his next 
proceeding was like to have reduced me to stupefac¬ 
tion. I saw him go to the bookshelves and take down 
a book. As he laid it on the table I glanced at the 
title, and when I saw that it was Raper’s “Navigation 
Tables” I stole softly out into the lobby, put on my 
hat and went for a walk. 

When I returned the investigation was apparently 
concluded, for Thorndyke was seated in his easy 
chair, placidly reading “The Compleat Angler.” On 


20 


THE BLUE SCARAB 


the table lay a large circular protractor, a straight¬ 
edge, an architect’s scale and a sheet of tracing-paper 
on which was a tracing in hectograph ink of Shaw- 
stead Manor. 

“Why did you make this tracing?” I asked. “Why 
not take the map itself?” 

“We don’t want the whole of it,” he replied, “and 
I dislike cutting up maps.” 

By taking an informal lunch in the train, we ar¬ 
rived at Shawstead Manor by half-past two. Our 
approach up the drive had evidently been observed, 
for Blowgrave and his daughter were waiting at the 
porch to receive us. The former came forward with 
outstretched hand, but a distinctly woebegone expres¬ 
sion, and exclaimed: “It is most kind of you to come 
down; but alas! you are too late.” 

“Too late for what?” demanded Thorndyke. 

“I will show you,” replied Blowgrave, and seizing 
my colleague by the arm, he strode off excitedly to a 
little wicket at the side of the house, and, passing 
through it, hurried along a narrow alley that skirted 
the garden wall and ended in a large meadow, at one 
end of which stood a dilapidated windmill. Across 
this meadow he bustled, dragging my colleague with 
him, until he reached a heap of freshly-turned earth, 
where he halted and pointed tragically to a spot where 
the turf had evidently been raised and untidily re¬ 
placed. 

“There!” he exclaimed, stooping to pull up the 


THE BLUE SCARAB 


21 


loose turfs and thereby exposing what was evidently 
a large hole, recently and hastily filled in. “That was 
done last night or early this morning, for I walked 
over this meadow only yesterday evening and there 
was no sign of disturbed ground then.” 

Thorn dyke stood looking down a$the hole with a 
faint smile. “And what do you infer from that?” he 
asked. 

“Infer!” shrieked Blowgrave. “Why, I infer that 
whoever dug this hole was searching for Uncle Reu¬ 
ben and the lost jewels!” 

“I am inclined to agree with you,” Thorndyke said 
calmly. “He happened to search in the wrong place, 
but that is his affair.” 

“The wrong place!” Blowgrave and his daughter 
exclaimed in unison. “How do you know it is the 
wrong place?” 

“Because,” replied Thorndyke, “I believe I know 
the right place, and this is not it. But we can put the 
matter to the test, and we had better do so. Can you 
get a couple of men with picks and shovels? Or 
shall we handle the tools ourselves?” 

“I think that would be better,” said Blowgrave, 
who was quivering with excitement. “We don’t want 
to take any one into our confidence if we can help it.” 

“No,” Thorndyke agreed. “Then I suggest that 
you fetch the tools while I locate the spot.” 

Blowgrave assented eagerly and went off at a brisk 
trot, while the young lady remained with us and 
watched Thorndyke with intense curiosity. 


22 


THE BLUE SCARAB 


“I mustn’t interrupt you with questions,” said she, 
“but I can’t imagine how you found out where Uncle 
Reuben was buried.” 

“We will go into that later,” he replied; “but first 
we have got to find Uncle Reuben.” He laid his 
research-case down on the ground, and opening it, 
took out three sheets of paper, each bearing a dupli¬ 
cate of his tracing of the map; and on each was 
marked a spot on this meadow from which a number 
of lines radiated like the spokes of a wheel. 

“You see, Jervis,” he said, exhibiting them to me, 
“the advantage of a map. I have been able to rule 
off these sets of bearings regardless of obstructions, 
such as those young trees, which have arisen since 
Silas’s day, and mark the spot in its correct place. If 
the recent obstructions prevent us from taking the 
bearings, we can still find the spot by measurements 
with the land-chain or tape.” 

“Why have you got three plans?” I asked. 

“Because there are three imaginable places. No. i 
is the most likely; No. 2 less likely, but possible; 
No. 3 is impossible. That is the one that our friend 
tried last night. No. 1 is among those young trees, 
and we will now see if we can pick up the bearings 
in spite of them.” 

We moved on to the clump of young trees, where 
Thorndyke took from the research-case a tall, folding 
camera-tripod and a large prismatic compass with an 
aluminium dial. With the latter he took one or two 
trial bearings and then, setting up the tripod, fixed 


THE BLUE SCARAB 


23 

the compass on it. For some minutes Miss Blowgrave 
and I watched him as he shifted the tripod from spot 
to spot, peering through the sight-vane of the com¬ 
pass and glancing occasionally at the map. At length 
he turned to us and said: 

“We are in luck. None of these trees interferes 
with our bearings.” He took from the research-case 
a surveyor’s arrow, and sticking it in the ground under 
the tripod, added: “That is the spot. But we may 
have to dig a good way round it, for a compass is 
only a rough instrument.” 

At this moment Mr. Blowgrave staggered up, 
breathing hard, and flung down on the ground three 
picks, two shovels and a spade. “I won’t hinder you, 
doctor, by asking for explanations,” said he, “but I 
am utterly mystified. You must tell us what it all 
means when we have finished our work.” 

This Thorndyke promised to do, but meanwhile he 
took off his coat, and rolling up his shirt sleeves, seized 
the spade and began cutting out a large square of 
turf. As the soil was uncovered, Blowgrave and I 
attacked it with picks and Miss Blowgrave shovelled 
away the loose earth. 

“Do you know how far down we have to go?” I 
asked. 

“The body lies six feet below the surface,” Thorn- 
dyke replied; and as he spoke he laid down his spade, 
and taking a telescope from the research-case, swept 
it round the margin of the meadow and finally pointed 
it at a farm-house some six hundred yards distant, of 


24 


THE BLUE SCARAB 


which he made a somewhat prolonged inspection, 
after which he took the remaining pick and fell to 
work on the opposite corner of the exposed square of 
earth. 

For nearly half an hour we worked on steadily, 
gradually eating our way downwards, plying pick and 
shovel alternately, while Miss Blowgrave cleared the 
loose earth away from the edges of the deepening pit. 
Then a halt was called and we came to the surface, 
wiping our faces. 

“I think, Nellie,” said Blowgrave, divesting himself 
of his waistcoat, “a jug of lemonade and four tum¬ 
blers would be useful, unless our visitors would pre¬ 
fer beer.” 

We both gave our votes for lemonade, and Miss 
Nellie tripped away towards the house, while Thorn- 
dyke, taking up his telescope, once more inspected the 
farm-house. 

“You seem greatly interested in that house,” I re¬ 
marked. 

“I am,” he replied, handing me the telescope. 
“Just take a look at the window in the right hand 
gable, but keep under the tree.” 

I pointed the telescope at the gable and there ob¬ 
served an open window at which a man was seated. 
He held a binocular glass to his eyes and the instru¬ 
ment appeared to be directed at us, 

“We are being spied on, I fancy,” said I, passing 
the telescope to Blowgrave, “but I suppose it doesn’t 
matter. This is your land, isn’t it?” 


THE BLUE SCARAB 


25 

“Yes,” replied Blowgrave, “but still, we didn’t want 
any spectators. That is Harold Bowker,” he added, 
steadying the telescope against a tree, “my cousin 
Arthur’s nephew, whom I told you about as having 
inherited the farm-house. He seems mighty interested 
in us; but small things interest one in the country.” 

Here the appearance of Miss Nellie, advancing 
across the meadow with an inviting looking basket, 
diverted our attention from our inquisitive watcher. 
Six thirsty eyes were riveted on that basket until it 
drew near and presently disgorged a great glass jug 
and four tumblers, when we each took off a long and 
delicious draught and then jumped down into the pit 
to resume our labours. 

Another half-hour passed. We had excavated in 
some places to nearly the full depth and were just 
discussing the advisability of another short rest when 
Blowgrave, who was working in one corner, uttered 
a loud cry and stood up suddenly, holding something 
in his fingers. A glance at the object showed it to 
be a bone, brown and earth-stained, but evidently 
a bone. Evidently, too, a human bone, as Thorndyke 
decided when Blowgrave handed it to him trium¬ 
phantly. 

“We have been very fortunate,” said he, “to get 
so near at the first trial. This is from the right great 
toe, so we may assume that the skeleton lies just out¬ 
side this pit, but we had better excavate carefully in 
your corner and see exactly how the bones lie.” This 
he proceeded to do himself, probing cautiously with 


26 


THE BLUE SCARAB 


the spade and clearing the earth away from the 
corner. Very soon the remaining bones of the right 
foot came into view and then the ends of the two leg- 
bones and a portion of the left foot. 

“We can see now,” said he, “how the skeleton lies, 
and all we have to do is to extend the excavation in 
that direction. But there is only room for one to work 
down here. I think you and Mr. Blowgrave had bet¬ 
ter dig down from the surface. 

On this, I climbed out of the pit, followed reluc¬ 
tantly by Blowgrave, who still held the little brown 
bone in his hand and was in a state of wild excite¬ 
ment and exultation that somewhat scandalized his 
daughter. 

“It seems rather ghoulish,” she remarked, “to be 
gloating over poor Uncle Reuben’s body in this way.” 

“I know,” said Blowgrave, “it isn’t reverent. But 
I didn’t kill Uncle Reuben, you know, whereas—well 
it was a long time ago.” With this rather inconse¬ 
quent conclusion he took a draught of lemonade, 
seized his pick and fell to work with a will. I, too, 
indulged in a draught and passed a full tumbler down 
to Thorndyke. But before resuming my labours I 
picked up the telescope and once more inspected the 
farm-house. The window ' was still open, but the 
watcher had apparently become bored with the not 
very thrilling spectacle. At any rate he had disap¬ 
peared. 

From this time onward every few minutes brought 
some discovery. First, a pair of deeply rusted steel 


THE BLUE SCARAB 


27 

shoe buckles; then one or two buttons, and presently 
a fine gold watch with a fob-chain and a bunch of 
seals, looking uncannily new and fresh and seeming 
more fraught with tragedy than even the bones them¬ 
selves. In his cautious digging, Thorndyke was care¬ 
ful not to disturb the skeleton; and looking down into 
the narrow trench that was growing from the corner 
of the pit, I could see both legs, with only the right 
foot missing, projecting from the miniature cliff. 
Meanwhile our part of the trench was deepening rap¬ 
idly, so that Thorndyke presently warned us to stop 
digging and bade us come down and shovel away the 
earth as he disengaged it. 

At length the whole skeleton, excepting the head, 
was uncovered, though it lay undisturbed as it might 
have lain in its coffin. And now, as Thorndyke picked 
away the earth around the head, we could see that the 
skull was propped forward as if it rested on a high 
pillow. A little more careful probing with the pick- 
point served to explain this appearance. For as the 
earth fell away and disclosed the grinning skull, there 
came into view the edge and iron-bound corners of a 
small chest. 

It was an impressive spectacle; weird, solemn and 
rather dreadful. There for over a century the ill- 
fated gambler had lain, his mouldering head pillowed 
on the booty of unrecorded villainy, booty that had 
been won by fraud, retrieved by violence, and hidden 
at last by the final winner with the witness of his 
crime. 


28 


THE BLUE SCARAB 


“Here is a fine text for a moralist who would preach 
on the vanity of riches,” said Thorndyke. 

We all stood silent for a while, gazing, not without 
awe, at the stark figure that lay guarding the ill- 
gotten treasure. Miss Blowgrave—who had been 
helped down when we descended—crept closer to her 
father and murmured that it was “rather awful”; 
while Blowgrave himself displayed a queer mixture of 
exultation and shuddering distaste. 

Suddenly the silence was broken by a voice from 
above, and we all looked up with a start. A youngish 
man was standing on the brink of the pit, looking 
down on us with very evident disapproval. 

“It seems that I have come just in the nick of 
time,” observed the new-comer. “I shall have to take 
possession of that chest, you know, and of the re¬ 
mains, too, I suppose. That is my ancestor, Reuben 
Blowgrave.” 

“Well, Harold,” said Blowgrave, “you can have 
Uncle Reuben if you want him. But the chest be¬ 
longs to Nellie.” 

Here Mr. Harold Bowker—I recognized him now 
as the watcher from the window—dropped down into 
the pit and advanced with something of a swagger. 

“I am Reuben’s heir,” said he, “through my Uncle 
Arthur, and I take possession of this property and 
the remains.” 

“Pardon me, Harold,” said Blowgrave, “but Nellie 
is Arthur’s residuary legatee, and this is the residue 
of the estate.” 


THE BLUE SCARAB 


29 

“Rubbish!” exclaimed Bowker. “By the way, how 
did you find out where he was buried?” 

“Oh, that was quite simple,” replied Thorndyke 
with unexpected geniality. “I’ll show you the plan.” 
He climbed up to the surface and returned in a few 
moments with the three tracings and his letter-case. 
“This is how we located the spot.” He handed the 
plan marked No. 3 to Bowker, who took it from him 
and stood looking at it with a puzzled frown. 

“But this isn’t the place,” he said at length. 

“Isn’t it?” queried Thorndyke. “No, of course; 
I’ve given you the wrong one. This is the plan.” He 
handed Bowker the plan marked No. 1, and took the 
other from him, laying it down on a heap of earth. 
Then, as Bowker pored gloomily over No. 1, he took 
a knif§ and a pencil from his pocket, and with his 
back to our visitor, scraped the lead of the pencil, let¬ 
ting the black powder fall on the plan that he had 
just laid down. I watched him with some curiosity; 
and when I observed that the black scrapings fell on 
two spots near the edges of the paper, a sudden sus¬ 
picion flashed into my mind, which was confirmed 
when I saw him tap the paper lightly with his pencil, 
gently blow away the powder, and quickly producing 
my photograph of the typewritten letter from his case, 
hold it for a moment beside the plan. 

“This is all very well,” said Bowker, looking up 
from the plan, “but how did you find out about these 
bearings?” 

Thorndyke swiftly replaced the letter in his case, 


30 


THE BLUE SCARAB 


and turning round, replied, “I am afraid I can’t give 
you any further information.” 

“Can’t you, indeed!” Bowker exclaimed insolently. 
“Perhaps I shall compel you to. But, at any rate, I 
forbid any of you to lay hands on my property.” 

Thorndyke looked at him steadily and said in an 
ominously quiet tone: 

“Now, listen to me, Mr. Bowker. Let us have an 
end of this nonsense. You have played a risky game 
and you have lost. How much you have lost I can’t 
say until I know whether Mr. Blowgrave intends to 
prosecute.” 

“To prosecute!” shouted Bowker. “What the 
deuce do you mean by prosecute?” 

“I mean,” said Thorndyke, “that on the 7th of 
June, after nine o’clock at night, you entered the 
dwelling-house of Mr. Blowgrave and stole and car¬ 
ried away certain of his goods and chattels. A part 
of them you have restored, but you are still in pos¬ 
session of some of the stolen property, to wit, a 
scarab and a deed-box.” 

As Thorndyke made this statement in his calm, 
level tones, Bowker’s face blanched to a tallowy 
white, and he stood staring at my colleague, the very 
picture of astonishment and dismay. But he fired a 
last shot. 

“This is sheer midsummer madness,” he exclaimed 
huskily; “and you know it.” 

Thorndyke turned to our host. “It is for you to 
settle, Mr. Blowgrave,” said he. “I hold conclusive 


THE BLUE SCARAB 


3i 

evidence that Mr. Bowker stole your deed-box. If 
you decide to prosecute I shall produce that evidence 
in court and he will certainly be convicted.” 

Blowgrave and his daughter looked at the accused 
man with an embarrassment almost equal to his own. 

“I am astounded,” the former said at length; “but 
I don’t want to be vindictive. Look here, Harold, 
hand over the scarab and we’ll say no more about 
it.” 

“You can’t do that,” said Thorndyke. “The law 
doesn’t allow you to compound a robbery. He can 
return the property if he pleases and you can do as 
you think best about prosecuting. But you can’t 
make conditions.” 

There was silence for some seconds; then, without 
another word, the crestfallen adventurer turned, and 
scrambling up out of the pit, took a hasty departure. 

It was nearly a couple of hours later that, after a 
leisurely wash and a hasty, nondescript meal, we car¬ 
ried the little chest from the dining-room to the 
study. Here, when he had closed the French window 
and drawn the curtains, Mr. Blowgrave produced a 
set of tools and we fell to work on the iron fastenings 
of the chest. It was no light task, though a century’s 
rust had thinned the stout bands, but at length the 
lid yielded to the thrust of a long case-opener and 
rose with a protesting creak. The chest was lined 
with a double thickness of canvas, apparently part 
of a sail, and contained a number of small leathern 


32 


THE BLUE SCARAB 


bags, which, as we lifted them out, one by one, felt as 
if they were filled with pebbles. But when we untied 
the thongs of one and emptied its contents into a 
wooden bowl, Blowgrave heaved a sigh of ecstasy and 
Miss Nellie uttered a little scream of delight. They 
were all cut stones, and most of them of exceptional 
size; rubies, emeralds, sapphires, and a few diamonds. 
As to their value, we could form but the vaguest 
guess; but Thorndyke, who was a fair judge of gem¬ 
stones, gave it as his opinion that they were fine speci¬ 
mens of their kind, though roughly cut, and that they 
had probably formed the enrichment of some shrine. 

“The question is,” said Blowgrave, gazing gloat¬ 
ingly on the bowl of sparkling gems, “what are we 
to do with them?” 

“I suggest,” said Thorndyke, “that Dr. Jervis 
stays here to-night to help you to guard them and 
that in the morning you take them up to London and 
deposit them at your bank.” 

Blowgrave fell in eagerly with this suggestion, 
which I seconded. “But,” said he, “that chest is a 
queer-looking package to be carrying abroad. Now, 
if we only had that confounded deed-box-” 

“There’s a deed-box on the cabinet behind you,” 
said Thorndyke. 

Blowgrave turned round sharply. “God bless us!” 
he exclaimed. “It has come back the way it went. 
Harold must have slipped in at the window while we 
were at tea. Well, I’m glad he has made restitution. 
When I look at that bowl and think what he must 



THE BLUE SCARAB 


33 


have narrowly missed, I don’t feel inclined to be hard 
on him. I suppose the scarab is inside—not that it 
matters much now.” 

The scarab was inside in an envelope; and as 
Thorndyke turned it over in his hand and examined 
the hieroglyphics on it through his lens, Miss Blow- 
grave asked: “Is it of any value, Dr. Thorndyke? It 
can’t have any connection with the secret of the 
hiding-place, because you found the jewels with¬ 
out it. 

“By the way, doctor, I don’t know whether it is 
permissible for me to ask, but how on earth did you 
find out where the jewels were hidden? To me it 
looks like black magic.” 

Thorndyke laughed in a quiet, inward fashion. 
“There is nothing magical about it,” said he. “It 
was a perfectly simple, straightforward problem. 
But Miss Nellie is wrong. We had the scarab; that 
is to say we had the wax impression of it, which is 
the same thing. And the scarab was the key to the 
riddle. You see,” he continued, “Silas’s letter and the 
scarab formed together a sort of intelligence test.” 

“Did they?” said Blowgrave. “Then he drew a 
blank every time.” 

Thorndyke chuckled. “His descendants were cer¬ 
tainly a little lacking in enterprise,” he admitted. 
“Silas’s instructions were perfectly plain and explicit. 
Whoever would find the treasure must first acquire 
some knowledge of Egyptian lore and must study the 
scarab attentively. It was the broadest of hints, but 


THE BLUE SCARAB 


34 

no one—excepting Harold Bowker, who must have 
heard about the scarab from his Uncle Arthur— 
seems to have paid any attention to it. 

“Now it happens that I have just enough elemen¬ 
tary knowledge of the hieroglyphic characters to 
enable me to spell them out when they are used 
alphabetically; and as soon as I saw the seal, I could 
see that these hieroglyphics formed English words. 
My attention was first attracted by the second group 
of signs, which spelled the word ‘ Reuben,’ and then 
I saw that the first group spelled ‘Uncle.’ Of course, 
the instant I heard Miss Nellie speak of the connec¬ 
tion between the scarab and Uncle Reuben, the mur¬ 
der was out. I saw at a glance that the scarab con¬ 
tained all the required information. Last night I 
made a careful tracing of the hieroglyphics and then 
rendered them into our own alphabet. This is the 
result.” 

He took from his letter-case and spread out on the 
table a duplicate of the tracing which I had seen him 
make, and of which he had given me a copy. But 
since I had last seen it, it had received an addition; 
under each group of signs the equivalents in modern 
Roman lettering had been written, and these made the 
following words: 

“UNKL RUBN IS IN TH MILL FIELD SKS 
FT DOWN CHURCH SPIR NORTH TEN 
THIRTY EAST DINGL SOUTH GABL NORTH 
ATY FORTY FIF WST GOD SAF KING JORJ.” 


THE BLUE SCARAB 


35 



/WW\» 

UNKL 


M 


VIS PjL ft*_-n 

..CHURCH LVflt „ NORTH TEN THIRTY 

u»ufi» 

QlNOL SOUTH 0^15? NORTH 


tJ 

J^/WVAM 

RU^N IS IN 

(iw.n^ 1 


w w 

P4V- AAAAAA - yy __ 

TH - Mia 


$KV FT 


aaa/\M 
DQW r* 


/VNAAAA 


« 


EAST 


HI fell^MfTti. 

ATY FORTY fif WST COO JaF 


kinq jorj 


The transliteration of the hieroglyphics. 







3 6 THE BLUE SCARAB 

Our two friends gazed at Thorndyke’s translitera¬ 
tion in blank astonishment. At length Blowgrave 
remarked: “But this translation must have demanded 
a very profound knowledge of the Egyptian writing.” 

“Not at all,” replied Thorndyke. “Any intelligent 
person could master the Egyptian alphabet in an hour. 
The language, of course, is quite another matter. The 
spelling of this is a little crude, but it is quite intel¬ 
ligible and does Silas great credit, considering how 
little was known in his time.” 

“How do you suppose M. Fouquet came to over¬ 
look this?” Blowgrave asked. 

“Naturally enough,” was the reply. “He was 
looking for an Egyptian inscription. But this is not 
an Egyptian inscription. Does he speak English?” 

“Very little. Practically not at all.” 

“Then, as the words are English words and imper¬ 
fectly spelt, the hieroglyphics must have appeared to 
him mere nonsense. And he was right as to the scarab 
being an imitation.” 

“There is another point,” said Blowgrave. “How 
was it that Harold made that extraordinary mistake 
about the place? The directions are clear enough. 
All you had to do was to go out there with a compass 
and take the bearings just as they were given.” 

“But,” said Thorndyke, “that is exactly what he 
did, and hence the mistake. He was apparently un¬ 
aware of the phenomenon known as the Secular Varia¬ 
tion of the Compass. As you know, the compass does 
not—usually—point to true north, but to the Mag- 


THE BLUE SCARAB 


37 

netic North; and the Magnetic North is continually 
changing its position. When Reuben was buried— 
about 18io—it was twenty-four degrees, twenty-six 
minutes west of true north; at the present time it is 
fourteen degrees, forty-eight minutes west of true 
north. So Harold’s bearings would be no less than 
ten degrees out, which, of course, gave him a totally 
wrong position. But Silas was a ship-master, a navi¬ 
gator, and of course, knew all about the vagaries of 
the compass; and, as his directions were intended for 
use at some date unknown to him, I assumed that the 
bearings that he gave were true bearings—that when 
he said ‘north’ he meant true north, which is always 
the same; and this turned out to be the case. But I 
also prepared a plan with magnetic bearings corrected 
up to date. Here are the three plans: No. i—the one 
we used—showing true bearings; No. 2, showing cor¬ 
rected magnetic bearings which might have given us 
the correct spot; and No. 3, with uncorrected mag¬ 
netic bearings, giving us the spot where Harold dug, 
and which could not possibly have been the right 
spot.” 

On the following morning I escorted the deed-box, 
filled with the booty and tied up and sealed with the 
scarab, to Mr. Blowgrave’s bank. And that ended 
our connection with the case; excepting that, a month 
or two later, we attended by request the unveiling in 
Shawstead churchyard of a fine monument to Reuben 
Blowgrave. This took the slightly inappropriate 


THE BLUE SCARAB 


38 

form of an obelisk, on which were cut the name and 
approximate dates, with the added inscription: “Cast 
thy bread upon the waters and it shall return after 
many days”; concerning which Thorndyke remarked 
dryly that he supposed the exhortation applied equally 
even if the bread happened to belong to some one 
else. 


II 


THE CASE OF THE WHITE FOOT-PRINTS 

“X X TELL,” said my friend Foxton, pursuing a ta¬ 
rn/Y/ miliar and apparently inexhaustible topic, 
“Pd sooner have your job than my own.” 

“I’ve no doubt you would,” was my unsympathetic 
reply. “I never met a man who wouldn’t. We all 
tend to consider other men’s jobs in terms of their 
advantages and our own in terms of their drawbacks. 
It is human nature.” 

“Oh, it’s all very well for you to be so beastly 
philosophical,” retorted Foxton. “You wouldn’t be if 
you were in my place. Here, in Margate, it’s measles, 
chicken-pox and scarlatina all the summer, and bron¬ 
chitis, colds and rheumatism all the winter. A deadly 
monotony. Whereas you and Thorndyke sit there in 
your chambers and let your clients feed you up with 
the raw material of romance. Why, your life is a sort 
of everlasting Adelphi drama.” 

“You exaggerate, Foxton,” said I. “We, like you, 
have our routine work, only it is never heard of out¬ 
side the Law Courts; and you, like every other doctor, 
must run up against mystery and romance from time 
to time.” 

Foxton shook his head as he held out his hand for 
my cup. “I don’t,” said he. “My practice yields 
nothing but an endless round of dull routine.” 

39 


40 


THE BLUE SCARAB 


And then, as if in commentary on this last state¬ 
ment, the housemaid burst into the room and, with 
hardly dissembled agitation, exclaimed: 

“If you please, sir, the page from Beddingfield’s 
Boarding House says that a lady has been found 
dead in her bed and would you go round there im¬ 
mediately.” 

“Very well, Jane,” said Foxton, and as the maid 
retired, he deliberately helped himself to another 
fried egg and, looking across the table at me, ex¬ 
claimed: “Isn’t that always the way? Come immedi¬ 
ately—now—this very instant, although the patient 
may have been considering for a day or two whether 
he’ll send for you or not. But directly he decides, 
you must spring out of bed, or jump up from your 
breakfast, and run.” 

“That’s quite true,” I agreed; “but this really does 
seem to be an urgent case.” 

“What’s the urgency?” demanded Foxton. “The 
woman is already dead. Any one would think she 
was in imminent danger of coming to life again and 
that my instant arrival was the only thing that could 
prevent such a catastrophe.” 

“You’ve only a third-hand statement that she is 
dead,” said I. “It is just possible that she isn’t; and 
even if she is, as you will have to give evidence at the 
inquest, you don’t want the police to get there first 
and turn out the room before you’ve made your in¬ 
spection.” 

“Gad!” exclaimed Foxton. “I hadn’t thought of 


CASE OF THE WHITE FOOT-PRINTS 41 

that. Yes. You’re right. I’ll hop round at once.” 

He swallowed the remainder of the egg at a single 
gulp and rose from the table. Then he paused and 
stood for a few moments looking down at me irreso¬ 
lutely. 

“I wonder, Jervis,” he said, “if you would mind 
coming round with me. You know all the medico¬ 
legal ropes, and I don’t. What do you say?” 

I agreed instantly, having, in fact, been restrained 
only by delicacy from making the suggestion myself; 
and when I had fetched from my room my pocket 
camera and telescopic tripod, we set forth together 
without further delay. 

Beddingfield’s Boarding House was but a few min¬ 
utes’ walk from Foxton’s residence, being situated 
near the middle of Ethelred Road, Cliftonville, a 
quiet, suburban street which abounded in similar 
establishments, many of which, I noticed, were under¬ 
going a spring-cleaning and renovation to prepare 
them for the approaching season. 

“That’s the house,” said Foxton, “where that 
woman is standing at the front door. Look at the 
boarders, collected at the dining-room window. 
There’s a rare commotion in that house, I’ll war¬ 
rant.” 

Here, arriving at the house, he ran up the steps 
and accosted in sympathetic tones the elderly woman 
who stood by the open street door. 

“What a dreadful thing this is, Mrs. Beddingfield! 
Terrible! Most distressing for you!” 


0 


42 


THE BLUE SCARAB 


“Ah, you’re right, Dr. Foxton,” she replied. “It’s 
an awful affair. Shocking. So bad for business, too. 
I do hope and trust there won’t be any scandal.” 

“I’m sure I hope not,” said Foxton. “There 
shan’t be if I can help it. And as my friend, Dr. 
Jervis, who is staying with me for a few days, is a 
lawyer as well as a doctor, we shall have the best 
advice. When was the affair discovered?” 

“Just before I sent for you, Dr. Foxton. The maid 
noticed that Mrs. Toussaint—that is the poor crea¬ 
ture’s name—had not taken in her hot water, so she 
knocked at the door. As she couldn’t get any answer, 
she tried the door and found it bolted on the inside, 
and then she came and told me. I went up and knocked 
loudly, and then, as I couldn’t get any reply, I told 
our boy, James, to force the door open with a case- 
opener, which he did quite easily as the bolt was only 
a small one. Then I went in, all of a tremble, for I 
had a presentiment that there was something wrong; 
and there she was, lying stone dead, with a most 
’orrible stare on her face and an empty bottle in her 
hand.” 

“A bottle, eh!” said Foxton. 

“Yes. She’d made away with herself, poor thing; 
and all on account of some silly love affair—and it 
was hardly even that.” 

“Ah,” said Foxton. “The usual thing. You must 
tell us about that later. Now we’d better go up and 
see the patient—at least the—er—perhaps you’ll show 
us the room, Mrs. Beddingfield.” 


CASE OF THE WHITE FOOT-PRINTS 43 

The landlady turned and preceded us up the stairs 
to the first-floor back, where she paused, and softly 
opening a door, peered nervously into the room. As 
we stepped past her and entered, she seemed inclined 
to follow, but, at a significant glance from me, Foxton 
persuasively ejected her and closed the door. Then 
we stood silent for a while and looked about us. 

In the aspect of the room there was something 
strangely incongruous with the tragedy that had been 
enacted within its walls; a mingling of the common¬ 
place and the terrible that almost amounted to anti¬ 
climax. Through the wide-open window the bright 
spring sunshine streamed in on the garish wall-paper 
and cheap furniture; from the street below, the pe¬ 
riodic shouts of a man selling “sole and mack-ro!” 
broke into the brisk staccato of a barrel-organ and 
both sounds mingled with a raucous voice close at 
hand, cheerfully trolling a popular song, and ac¬ 
counted for by a linen-clad elbow that bobbed in 
front of the window and evidently appertained to a 
house painter on an adjacent ladder. 

It was all very commonplace and familiar and dis¬ 
cordantly out of character with the stark figure that 
lay on the bed like a waxen effigy symbolic of 
tragedy. Here was none of that gracious somnolence 
in which death often presents itself with a suggestion 
of eternal repose. This woman was dead; horribly, 
aggressively dead. The thin, sallow face was rigid 
as stone, the dark eyes stared into infinite space with 
a horrid fixity that was quite disturbing to look on. 


44 


THE BLUE SCARAB 


And yet the posture of the corpse was not uneasy, 
being, in fact, rather curiously symmetrical, with 
both arms outside the bed-clothes and both hands 
closed, the right grasping, as Mrs. Beddingfield had 
said, an empty bottle. 

“Well,” said Foxton, as he stood looking down on 
the dead woman, “it seems a pretty clear case. She 
appears to have laid herself out and kept hold of the 
bottle so that there should be no mistake. How long 
do you suppose this woman has been dead, Jervis?” 

I felt the rigid limbs and tested the temperature 
of the body surface. 

“Not less than six hours,” I replied. “Probably 
more. I should say that she died about two o’clock 
this morning.” 

“And that is about all we can say,” said Foxton, 
“until the post-mortem has been made. Everything 
looks quite straightforward. No signs of a struggle 
or marks of violence. That blood on the mouth is 
probably due to her biting her lip when she drank 
from the bottle. Yes; here’s a little cut on the inside 
of the lip, corresponding to the upper incisors. By 
the way, I wonder if there is anything left in the 
bottle.” 

As he spoke, he drew the small, unlabelled, green 
glass phial from the closed hand—out of which it 
slipped quite easily—and held it up to the light. 

“Yes,” he exclaimed, “there’s more than a drachm 
left; quite enough for an analysis. But I don’t rec¬ 
ognize the smell. Do you?” 


CASE OF THE WHITE FOOT-PRINTS 45 

I sniffed at the bottle and was aware of a faint 
unfamiliar vegetable odour. 

“No,” I answered. “It appears to be a watery 
solution of some kind, but I can’t give it a name. 
Where is the cork?” 

“I haven’t seen it,” he replied. “Probably it is on 
the floor somewhere.” 

We both stooped to look for the missing cork and 
presently found it in the shadow, under the little bed¬ 
side table. But, in the course of that brief search, I 
found something else, which had indeed been lying 
in full view all the time—a wax match. Now a wax 
match is a perfectly innocent and very commonplace 
object, but yet the presence of this one gave me pause. 
In the first place, women do not, as a rule, use wax 
matches, though there was not much in that. What 
was more to the point was that the candlestick by the 
bedside contained a box of safety matches, and that, 
as the burned remains of one lay in the tray, it ap¬ 
peared to have been used to light the candle: Then 
why the wax match? 

While I was turning over this problem Foxton had 
corked the bottle, wrapped it carefully in a piece of 
paper which he took from the dressing table and be¬ 
stowed it in his pocket. 

“Well, Jervis,” said he, “I think we’ve seen every¬ 
thing. The analysis and the post-mortem will com¬ 
plete the case. Shall we go down and hear what Mrs. 
Beddingfield has to say?” 

But that wax match, slight as was its significance, 


THE BLUE SCARAB 


46 

taken alone, had presented itself to me as the last 
of a succession of phenomena each of which was sus¬ 
ceptible of a sinister interpretation, and the cumula¬ 
tive effect of these slight suggestions began to impress 
me somewhat strongly. 

a One moment, Foxton,” said I. “Don’t let us take 
anything for granted. We are here to collect evi¬ 
dence, and we must go warily. There is such a thing 
as homicidal poisoning, you know.” 

“Yes, of course,” he replied, “but there is nothing 
to suggest it in this case; at least, I see nothing. 
Do you?” 

“Nothing very positive,” said I; “but there are 
some facts that seem to call for consideration. Let 
us go over what we have seen. In the first place, 
there is a distinct discrepancy in the appearance of 
the body. The general easy, symmetrical posture, 
like that of a figure on a tomb, suggests the effect of 
a slow, painless poison. But look at the face. There 
is nothing reposeful about that. It is very strongly 
suggestive of pain or terror or both.” 

“Yes,” said Foxton, “that is so. But you can’t 
draw any satisfactory conclusions from the facial 
expression of dead bodies. Why, men who have been 
hanged, or even stabbed, often look as peaceful as 
babes.” 

“Still,” I urged, “it is a fact to be noted. Then 
there is that cut on the lip. It may have been pro¬ 
duced in the way you suggest; but it may equally 
well be the result of pressure on the mouth.” 


CASE OF THE WHITE FOOT-PRINTS 47 

Foxton made no comment on this beyond a slight 
shrug of the shoulders, and I continued: 

“Then there is the state of the hand. It was closed, 
but it did not really grasp the object it contained. 
You drew the bottle out without any resistance. It 
simply lay in the closed hand. But that is not 
a normal state of affairs. As you know, when a 
person dies grasping any object, either the hand 
relaxes and lets it drop, or the muscular action 
passes into cadaveric spasm and grasps the object 
firmly. And lastly, there is this wax match. Where 
did it come from? The dead woman apparently lit 
her candle with a safety match from the box. It is 
a small matter, but it wants explaining.” 

Foxton raised his eyebrows protestingly. “You’re 
like all specialists, Jervis,” said he. “You see your 
specialty in everything. And while you are straining 
these flimsy suggestions to turn a simple suicide into 
murder, you ignore the really conclusive fact that the 
door was bolted and had to be broken open before 
any one could get in.” 

“You are not forgetting, I suppose,” said I, “that 
the window was wide open and that there were house 
painters about and possibly a ladder left standing 
against the house.” 

“As to the ladder,” said Foxton, “that is a pure 
assumption; but we can easily settle the question by 
asking that fellow out there if it was or was not left 
standing last night.” 

Simultaneously we moved towards the window; but 


THE BLUE SCARAB 


48 

half-way we both stopped short. For the question of 
the ladder had in a moment become negligible. Star¬ 
ing up at us from the dull red linoleum which cov¬ 
ered the floor were the impressions of a pair of bare 
feet, imprinted in white paint with the distinctness of 
a woodcut. There was no need to ask if they had 
been made by the dead woman: they were unmistak¬ 
ably the feet of a man, and large feet at that. Nor 
could there be any doubt as to whence those feet had 
come. Beginning with startling distinctness under the 
window, the tracks diminished rapidly in intensity 
until they reached the carpeted portion of the room, 
where they vanished abruptly; and only by the closest 
scrutiny was it possible to detect the faint traces of 
the retiring tracks. 

Foxton and I stood for some moments gazing in 
silence at the sinister white shapes; then we looked 
at one another. 

“You’ve saved me from a most horrible blunder, 
Jervis,” said Foxton. “Ladder or no ladder, that fel¬ 
low came in at the window; and he came in last night, 
for I saw them painting these window-sills yesterday 
afternoon. Which side did he come from, I wonder?” 

We moved to the window and looked out on the 
sill. A set of distinct, though smeared impressions 
on the new paint gave unneeded confirmation and 
showed that the intruder had approached from the 
left side, close to which was a cast-iron stack-pipe, 
now covered with fresh green paint. 

“So,” said Foxton, “the presence or absence of the 


CASE OF THE WHITE FOOT-PRINTS 49 

ladder is of no significance. The man got into the 
window somehow, and that’s all that matters.” 

“On the contrary,” said I, “the point may be of 
considerable importance in identification. It isn’t 
every one who could climb up a stack-pipe, whereas 
most people could make shift to climb a ladder, even 
if it were guarded by a plank. But the fact that the 
man took off his boots and socks suggests that he 
came up by the pipe. If he had merely aimed at 
silencing his foot-falls, he would probably have re¬ 
moved his boots only.” 

From the window we turned to examine more closely 
the footprints on the floor, and, while I took a series 
of measurements with my spring tape, Foxton entered 
them in my notebook. 

“Doesn’t it strike you as rather odd, Jervis,” said 
he, “that neither of the little toes has made any 
mark?” 

“It does indeed,” I replied. “The appearances sug¬ 
gest that the little toes were absent, but I have never 
met with such a condition. Have you?” 

“Never. Of course one is acquainted with the 
supernumerary toe deformity, but I have never heard 
of congenitally deficient little toes.” 

Once more we scrutinized the footprints, and even 
examined those on the window-sill, obscurely marked 
on the fresh paint; but, exquisitely distinct as were 
those on the linoleum, showing every wrinkle and 
minute skin-marking, not the faintest hint of a little 
toe was to be seen on either foot. 


THE BLUE SCARAB 


50 

“It’s very extraordinary,” said Foxton. “He has 
certainly lost his little toes, if he ever had any. They 
couldn’t have failed to make some mark. But it’s a 
queer affair. Quite a windfall for the police, by the 
way; I mean for purposes of identification.” 

“Yes,” I agreed, “and having regard to the impor¬ 
tance of the footprints, I think it would be wise to get 
a photograph of them.” 

“Oh, the police will see to that,” said Foxton. “Be¬ 
sides, we haven’t got a camera, unless you thought 
of using that little toy snapshotter of yours.” 

As Foxton was no photographer I did not trouble 
to explain that my camera, though small, had been 
specially made for scientific purposes, 

“Any photograph is better than none,” I said, and 
with this I opened the tripod and set it over one of 
the most distinct of the footprints, screwed the camera 
to the goose-neck, carefully framed the footprint in 
the finder and adjusted the focus, finally making the 
exposure by means of an Antinous release. This 
process I repeated four times, twice on a right foot¬ 
print and twice on a left. 

“Well,” Foxton remarked, “with all those photo¬ 
graphs the police ought to be able to pick up the 
scent.” 

“Yes, they’ve got something to go on; but they’ll 
have to catch their hare before they can cook him. 
He won’t be walking about barefooted, you know.” 

“No. It’s a poor clue in that respect. And now 


CASE OF THE WHITE FOOT-PRINTS 51 

we may as well be off as we’ve seen all there is to 
see. I think we won’t have much to say to Mrs. Bed- 
dingfield. This is a police case, and the less I’m 
mixed up in it the better it will be for my practice.” 

I was faintly amused at Foxton’s caution when con¬ 
sidered by the light of his utterances at the breakfast 
table. Apparently his appetite for mystery and ro¬ 
mance was easily satisfied. But that was no affair 
of mine. I waited on the doorstep while he said a 
few—probably evasive—words to the landlady and 
then, as we started off together in the direction of the 
police station, I began to turn over in my mind the 
salient features of the case. For some time we walked 
on in silence, and must have been pursuing a parallel 
train of thought for, when he at length spoke, he 
almost put my reflections into words. 

“You know, Jervis,” said he, “there ought to be a 
clue in those footprints. I realize that you can’t tell 
how many toes a man has by looking at his booted 
feet. But those unusual footprints ought to give an 
expert a hint as to what sort of man to look for. 
Don’t they convey any hint to you?” 

I felt that Foxton was right; that if my brilliant 
colleague, Thorndyke, had been in my place, he 
would have extracted from those footprints some 
leading fact that would have given the police a start 
along some definite line of inquiry; and that belief, 
coupled with Foxton’s challenge, put me on my mettle. 

“They offer no particular suggestions to me at this 


THE BLUE SCARAB 


52 

moment,” said I, “but I think that, if we consider 
them systematically, we may be able to draw some 
useful deductions.” 

“Very well,” said Foxton, “then let us consider 
them systematically. Fire away. I should like to 
hear how you work these things out.” 

Foxton’s frankly spectatorial attitude was a little 
disconcerting, especially as it seemed to commit me 
to a result that I was by no means confident of attain¬ 
ing. I therefore began a little diffidently. 

“We are assuming that both the feet that made 
those prints were from some cause devoid of little 
toes. That assumption—which is almost certainly cor¬ 
rect—we treat as a fact, and, taking it as our starting 
point, the first step in the inquiry is to find some 
explanation of it. Now there are three possibilities, 
and only three: deformity, injury and disease. The 
toes may have been absent from birth, they may have 
been lost as a result of mechanical injury, or they 
may have been lost by disease. Let us take those 
possibilities in order. 

“Deformity we exclude since such a malformation 
is unknown to us. 

“Mechanical injury seems to be excluded by the 
fact that the two little toes are on opposite sides of 
the body and could not conceivably be affected by 
any violence which left the intervening feet uninjured. 
This seems to narrow the possibilities down to disease; 
and the question that arises is, What diseases are there 
which might result in the loss of both little toes?” 


CASE OF THE WHITE FOOT-PRINTS 53 

I looked inquiringly at Foxton, but he merely nod¬ 
ded encouragingly. His role was that of listener. 

“Well,” I pursued, “the loss of both toes seems to 
exclude local disease, just as it excluded local injury; 
and as to general diseases, I can think only of three 
which might produce this condition—Raynaud’s dis¬ 
ease, ergotism, and frost-bite.” 

“You don’t call frost-bite a general disease, do 
you?” objected Foxton. 

“For our present purpose, I do. The effects are 
local, but the cause—low external temperature— 
affects the whole body and is a general cause. Well, 
now, taking the diseases in order, I think we can ex¬ 
clude Raynaud’s disease. It does, it is true, occa¬ 
sionally cause the fingers or toes to die and drop off, 
and the little toes would be especially liable to be 
affected as being most remote from the heart. But 
in such a severe case the other toes would be affected. 
They would be shrivelled and tapered, whereas, if you 
remember, the toes of these feet were quite plump 
and full, to judge by the large impressions they made. 
So I think we may safely reject Raynaud’s disease. 
There remain ergotism and frost-bite; and the choice 
between them is just a question of relative frequency. 
Frost-bite is more common; therefore frost-bite is 
more probable.” 

“Do they tend equally to affect the little toes?” 
asked Foxton. 

“As a matter of probability, yes. The poison of 
ergot acting from within, and intense cold acting from 


THE BLUE SCARAB 


54 

without, contract the small blood-vessels and arrest 
the circulation. The feet, being the most distant parts 
of the body from the heart, are the first to feel the 
effects; and the little toes, which are the most distant 
parts of the feet, are the most susceptible of all.” 

Foxton reflected awhile, and then remarked: 

“This is all very well, Jervis, but I don’t see that 
you are much forrarder. This man has lost both his 
little toes, and on your showing, the probabilities are 
that the loss was due either to chronic ergot poisoning 
or to frost-bite, with a balance of probability in favour 
of frost-bite. That’s all. No proof, no verification. 
Just the law of probability applied to a particular 
case, which is always unsatisfactory. He may have 
lost his toes in some totally different way. But even 
if the probabilities work out correctly, I don’t see 
what use your conclusions would be to the police. 
They wouldn’t tell them what sort of man to look 
for.” 

There was a good deal of truth in Foxton’s objec¬ 
tion. A man who has suffered from ergotism or frost¬ 
bite is not externally different from any other man. 
Still, we had not exhausted the case, as I ventured to 
point out. 

“Don’t be premature, Foxton,” said I. “Let us 
pursue our argument a little farther. We have estab¬ 
lished a probability that this unknown man has suf¬ 
fered either from ergotism or frost-bite. That, as you 
say, is of no use by itself; but supposing we c&n show 
that these conditions tend to affect a particular class 


CASE OF THE WHITE FOOT-PRINTS 55 

of persons, we shall have established a fact that will 
indicate a line of investigation. And I think we can. 
Let us take the case of ergotism first. 

“Now how is chronic ergot poisoning caused? Not 
by the medicinal use of the drug, but by the consump¬ 
tion of the diseased rye in which ergot occurs. It is 
therefore peculiar to countries in which rye is used 
extensively as food. Those countries, broadly speak¬ 
ing, are the countries of North Eastern Europe, and 
especially Russia and Poland. 

“Then take the case of frost-bite. Obviously the 
most likely person to get frost-bitten is the inhabitant 
of a country with a cold climate. The most rigorous 
climates inhabited by white people are North America 
and North Eastern Europe, especially Russia and 
Poland. So you see, the areas associated with ergotism 
and frost-bite overlap to some extent. In fact they 
do more than overlap; for a person even slightly 
affected by ergot would be specially liable to frost¬ 
bite, owing to the impaired circulation. The conclu¬ 
sion is that, racially, in both ergotism and frost-bite, 
the balance of probability is in favour of a Russian, 
a Pole, or a Scandinavian. 

“Then in the case of frost-bite there is the occu¬ 
pation factor. What class of men tend most to be¬ 
come frost-bitten? Well, beyond all doubt, the great¬ 
est sufferers from frost-bite are sailors, especially 
those on sailing ships, and, naturally, on ships trading 
to arctic and sub-arctic countries. But the bulk of 
such sailing ships are those engaged in the Baltic and 


THE BLUE SCARAB 


56 

Archangel trade; and the crews of those ships are 
almost exclusively Scandinavians, Finns, Russians and 
Poles. So that, again, the probabilities point to a na¬ 
tive of North Eastern Europe, and, taken as a whole, 
by the overlapping of factors, to a Russian, a Pole, 
or a Scandinavian.” 

Foxton smiled sardonically. “Very ingenious, Jer¬ 
vis,” said he. “Most ingenious. As an academic 
statement of probabilities, quite excellent. But for 
practical purposes absolutely useless. However, here 
we are at the police station. I’ll just run in and give 
them the facts and then go on to the coroner’s office.” 

“I suppose I’d better not come in with you?” I said. 

“Well, no,” he replied. “You see, you have no 
official connection with the case, and they mightn’t 
like it. You’d better go and amuse yourself while I 
get the morning’s visits done. We can talk things 
over at lunch.” 

With this he disappeared into the police station, and 
I turned away with a smile of grim amusement. Ex¬ 
perience is apt to make us a trifle uncharitable, and 
experience had taught me that those who are the most 
scornful of academic reasoning are often not above 
retailing it with some reticence as to its original 
authorship. I had a shrewd suspicion that Foxton 
was at this very moment disgorging my despised 
“academic statement of probabilities” to an admiring 
police-inspector. 

My way towards the sea lay through Ethelred Road, 


CASE OF THE WHITE FOOT-PRINTS 57 

and I had traversed about half its length and was 
approaching the house of the tragedy when I ob¬ 
served Mrs. Beddingfield at the bay window. Evi¬ 
dently she recognized me, for a few moments later 
she appeared in outdoor clothes on the doorstep and 
advanced to meet me. 

“Have you seen the police?” she asked as we met. 

I replied that Dr. Foxton was even now at the po¬ 
lice station. 

“Ah!” she said, “it’s a dreadful affair; most un¬ 
fortunate, too, just at the beginning of the season. 
A scandal is absolute ruin to a boarding-house. What 
do you think of the case? Will it be possible to hush 
it up? Dr. Foxton said you were a lawyer, I think, 
Dr. Jervis?” 

“Yes, I am a lawyer, but really I know nothing of 
the circumstances of this case. Did I understand that 
there had been something in the nature of a love 
affair?” 

“Yes—at least—well, perhaps I oughtn’t to have 
said that. But hadn’t I better tell you the whole 
story?—that is, if I am not taking up too much of 
your time.” 

“I should be interested to hear what led to the 
disaster,” said I. 

“Then,” she said, “I will tell you all about it. Will 
you come indoors, or shall I walk a little way with 
you?” 

As I suspected that the police were at that moment 


THE BLUE SCARAB 


53 

on their way to the house, I chose the latter alterna¬ 
tive and led her away seawards at a pretty brisk 
pace. 

“Was this poor lady a widow?” I asked as we 
started up the street. 

“No, she wasn’t,” replied Mrs. Beddingfield, “and 
that was the trouble. Her husband was abroad—at 
least, he had been, and he was just coming home. A 
pretty home-coming it will be for him, poor man. He 
is an officer in the civil police at Sierra Leone, but he 
hasn’t been there long. He went there for his health.” 

“What! To Sierra Leone!” I exclaimed, for the 
“White Man’s Grave” seemed a queer health resort. 

“Yes. You see, Mr. Toussaint is a French Ca¬ 
nadian, and it seems that he has always been some¬ 
what of a rolling stone. For some time he was in the 
Klondike, but he suffered so much from the cold that 
he had to come away. It injured his health very 
severely; I don’t quite know in what way, but I do 
know that he was quite a cripple for a time. When 
he got better he looked out for a post in a warm cli¬ 
mate and eventually obtained the appointment of In¬ 
spector of Civil Police at Sierra Leone. That was 
about ten months ago, and when he sailed for Africa 
his wife came to stay with me, and has been here 
ever since.” 

“And this love affair that you spoke of?” 

“Yes, but I oughtn’t to have called it that. Let 
me explain what happened. About three months ago 
a Swedish gentleman—a Mr. Bergson—came to stay 


CASE OF THE WHITE FOOT-PRINTS 59 

here, and he seemed to be very much smitten with 
Mrs. Toussaint.” 

“And she?” 

“Oh, she liked him well enough. He is a tall, good- 
looking man—though for that matter he is no taller 
than her husband, nor any better looking. Both men 
are over six feet. But there was no harm so far as 
she was concerned, excepting that she didn’t see the 
position quite soon enough. She wasn’t very discreet, 
in fact I thought it necessary to give her a little ad¬ 
vice. However, Mr. Bergson left here and went to 
live at Ramsgate to superintend the unloading of the 
ice ships (he came from Sweden in one), and I 
thought the trouble was at an end. But it wasn’t, for 
he took to coming over to see Mrs. Toussaint, and of 
course I couldn’t have that. So at last I had to tell 
him that he mustn’t come to the house again. It was 
very unfortunate, for on that occasion I think he had 
been ‘tasting,’ as they say in Scotland. He wasn’t 
drunk, but he was excitable and noisy, and when I 
told him he mustn’t come again he made such a dis¬ 
turbance that two of the gentlemen boarders—Mr. 
Wardale and Mr. Macauley—had to interfere. And 
then he was most insulting to them, especially to Mr. 
Macauley, who is a coloured gentleman; called him 
a ‘buck nigger’ and all sorts of offensive names.” 

“And how did the coloured gentleman take it?” 

“Not very well, I am sorry to say, considering that 
he is a gentleman—a law student with chambers in 
the Temple. In fact, his language was so objection- 


6o 


THE Bl-iUE SCARAB 

able that Mr. Wardale insisted on my giving him 
notice on the spot. But I managed to get him taken 
in next door but one; you see, Mr. Wardale had been 
a Commissioner at Sierra Leone—it was through him 
that Mr. Toussaint got his appointment—so I suppose 
he was rather on his dignity with coloured people.” 

“And was that the last you heard of Mr. Bergson?” 

“He never came here again, but he wrote several 
times to Mrs. Toussaint, asking her to meet him. At 
last, only a few days ago, she wrote to him and told 
him that the acquaintance must cease.” 

“And has it ceased?” 

“As far as I know, it has.” 

“Then, Mrs. Beddingfield,” said I, “what makes 
you connect the affair with—with what has hap¬ 
pened?” 

“Well, you see,” she explained, “there is the hus¬ 
band. He was coming home, and is probably in Eng¬ 
land already.” 

“Indeed!” said I. 

“Yes,” she continued. “He went up into the bush 
to arrest some natives belonging to one of these gangs 
of murderers—Leopard Societies, I think they are 
called—and he got seriously wounded. He wrote to 
his wife from hospital, saying that he would be sent 
home as soon as he was fit to travel, and about ten 
days ago she got a letter from him saying that he 
was coming by the next ship. 

“I noticed that she seemed very nervous and upset 
when she got the letters from hospital, and still more 


CASE OF THE WHITE FOOT-PRINTS 61 

so when the last letter came. Of course, I don’t know 
what he said to her in those letters. It may be that 
he had heard something about Mr. Bergson, and 
threatened to take some action. Of course, I can’t 
say. I only know that she was very nervous and rest¬ 
less, and when we saw in the paper four days ago that 
the ship he would be coming by had arrived in Liver¬ 
pool, she seemed dreadfully upset. And she got worse 
and worse until—well, until last night.” 

“Has anything been heard of the husband since the 
ship arrived?” I asked. 

“Nothing whatever,” replied Mrs. Beddingfield, 
with a meaning look at me which I had no difficulty 
in interpreting. “No letter, no telegram, not a word. 
And you see, if he hadn’t come by that ship he would 
almost certainly have sent a letter by her. He must 
have arrived in England, but why hasn’t he turned 
up, or at least sent a wire? What is he doing? Why 
is he staying away? Can he have heard something? 
And what does he mean to do? That’s what kept the 
poor thing on wires, and that, I feel certain, is what 
drove her to make away with herself.” 

It was not my business to contest Mrs. Bedding- 
field’s erroneous deductions. I was seeking informa¬ 
tion—it seemed that I had nearly exhausted the 
present source. But one point required amplifying. 

“To return to Mr. Bergson, Mrs. Beddingfield,” 
said I. “Do I understand that he is a seafaring 
man?” 

“He was,” she replied. “At present he is settled 


62 


THE BLUE SCARAB 


at Ramsgate as manager of a company in the ice 
trade, but formerly he was a sailor. I have heard 
him say that he was one of the crew of an exploring 
ship that went in search of the North Pole and that 
he was locked up in the ice for months and months. 
I should have thought he would have had enough of 
ice after that.” 

With this view I expressed warm agreement, and 
having now obtained all the information that appeared 
to be available, I proceeded to bring the interview to 
an end. 

“Well, Mrs. Beddingfield,” I said, “it is a rather 
mysterious affair. Perhaps more light may be thrown 
on it at the inquest. Meanwhile, I should think that 
it will be wise of you to keep your own counsel as 
far as outsiders are concerned.” 

The remainder of the morning I spent pacing the 
smooth stretch of sand that lies to the east of the 
jetty, and reflecting on the evidence that I had ac¬ 
quired in respect of this singular crime. Evidently 
there was no lack of clues in this case. On the con¬ 
trary, there were two quite obvious lines of inquiry, 
for both the Swede and the missing husband presented 
the characters of the hypothetical murderer. Both 
had been exposed to the conditions which tend to pro¬ 
duce frost-bite; one of them had probably been a con¬ 
sumer of rye meal, and both might be said to have a 
motive—though, to be sure, it was a very insufficient 
one—for committing the crime. Still, in both cases 


CASE OF THE WHITE FOOT-PRINTS 63 

the evidence was merely speculative; it suggested a 
line of investigation, but it did nothing more. 

When I met Foxton at lunch I was sensible of a 
curious change in his manner. His previous expan¬ 
siveness had given place to marked reticence and a 
certain official secretiveness. 

“I don’t think, you know, Jervis,” he said, when I 
opened the subject, “that we had better discuss this 
affair. You see, I am the principal witness, and while 
the case is sub judice —well, in fact the police don’t 
want the case talked about.” 

“But surely I am a witness, too, and an expert wit¬ 
ness, moreover-” 

“That isn’t the view of the police. They look on 
you as more or less of an amateur, and as you have 
no official connection with the case, I don’t think they 
propose to subpoena you. Superintendent Platt, who 
is in charge of the case, wasn’t very pleased at my 
having taken you to the house. Said it was quite 
irregular. Oh, and by the way, he says you must 
hand over those photographs.” 

“But isn’t Platt going to have the footprints photo¬ 
graphed on his own account?” I objected. 

“Of course he is. He is going to have a set of 
proper photographs taken by an expert photographer; 
—he was mightily amused when he heard about your 
little snapshot affair. Oh, you can trust Platt. He 
is a great man. He has had a course of instruction 
at the Finger Print Department in London.” 



64 


THE BLUE SCARAB 


“I don’t see how that is going to help him, as there 
aren’t any finger prints in this case.” This was a 
mere fly-cast on my part, but Foxton rose at once at 
the rather clumsy bait. 

“Oh, aren’t there?” he exclaimed. “You didn’t 
happen to spot them, but they were there. Platt has 
got the prints of a complete right hand. This is in 
strict confidence, you know,” he added, with some¬ 
what belated caution. 

Foxton’s sudden reticence restrained me from 
uttering the obvious comment on the superintendent’s 
achievement. I returned to the subject of the photo¬ 
graphs. 

“Supposing I decline to hand over my film?” 
said I. 

“But I hope you won’t—and in fact you mustn’t. 
I am officially connected with the case, and I’ve got 
to live with these people. As the police-surgeon, I am 
responsible for the medical evidence, and Platt ex¬ 
pects me to get those photographs from you. Obvi¬ 
ously you can’t keep them. It would be most ir¬ 
regular.” 

It was useless to argue. Evidently the police did 
not want me to be introduced into the case, and after 
all, the superintendent was within his rights, if he 
chose to regard me as a private individual and to 
demand the surrender of the film. 

Nevertheless I was loath to give up the photo¬ 
graphs, at least, until I had carefully studied them. 
The case was within my own specialty of practice, 


CASE OF THE WHITE FOOT-PRINTS 65 

and was a strange and interesting one. Moreover, it 
appeared to be in unskilful hands, judging from the 
finger-print episode, and then experience had taught 
me to treasure up small scraps of chance evidence, 
since one never knew when one might be drawn into 
a case in a professional capacity. In effect, I decided 
not to give up the photographs, though that decision 
committed me to a ruse that I was not very willing 
to adopt. I would rather have acted quite straight¬ 
forwardly. 

“Well, if you insist, Foxton,” I said, “I will hand 
over the film or, if you like, I will destroy it in your 
presence.” 

“I think Platt would rather have the film unin¬ 
jured,” said Foxton. “Then he’ll know, you know,” 
he added, with a sly grin. 

In my heart, I thanked Foxton for that grin. It 
made my own guileful proceedings so much easier; 
for a suspicious man invites you to get the better of 
him if you can. 

After lunch I went up to my room, locked the door 
and took the little camera from my pocket. Having 
fully wound up the film, I extracted it, wrapped it up 
carefully and bestowed it in my inside breast-pocket. 
Then I inserted a fresh film, and going to the open 
window, took four successive snapshots of the sky. 
This done, I closed the camera, slipped it into my 
pocket, and went downstairs. Foxton was in the hall, 
brushing his hat, as I descended, and at once renewed 
his demand. 


66 


THE BLUE SCARAB 


“About those photographs, Jervis,” said he, “I shall 
be looking in at the police station presently, so if you 
wouldn’t mind-” 

“To be sure,” said I. “I will give you the film now, 
if you like.” 

Taking the camera from my pocket, I solemnly 
wound up the remainder of the film, extracted it, 
stuck down the loose end with ostentatious care, and 
handed it to him. 

“Better not expose it to the light,” I said, going 
the whole hog of deception, “or you may fog the 
exposures.” 

Foxton took the spool from me as if it were hot— 
he was not a photographer—and thrust it into his 
hand-bag. He was still thanking me quite profusely 
when the front-door bell rang. 

The visitor who stood revealed when Foxton opened 
the door was a small, spare gentleman with a com¬ 
plexion of the peculiar brown-papery quality that sug¬ 
gests long residence in the Tropics. He stepped in 
briskly and introduced himself and his business with¬ 
out preamble. 

“My name is Wardale—boarder at Beddingfield’s. 
I’ve called with reference to the tragic event 
which-” 

Here Foxton interposed in his frostiest official tone. 
“I am afraid, Mr. Wardale, I can’t give you any in¬ 
formation about the case at present.” 

“I saw you two gentlemen at the house this morn- 




CASE OF THE WHITE FOOT-PRINTS 67 

ing,” Mr. Wardale continued, but Foxton again cut 
him short. 

“You did. We were there—or at least, I was—as 
the representative of the Law, and while the case is 
sub judice -” 

“It isn’t yet,” interrupted Wardale. 

“Well, I can’t enter into any discussion of it-” 

“I am not asking you to,” said Wardale, a little 
impatiently. “But I understand that one of you is 
Dr. Jervis.” 

“I am,” said I. 

“I must really warn you,” Foxton began again; 
but Mr. Wardale interrupted testily: 

“My dear sir, I am a lawyer and a magistrate and 
understand perfectly well what is and what is not per¬ 
missible. I have come simply to make a professional 
engagement with Dr. Jervis.” 

“In what way can I be of service to you?” I asked. 

“I will tell you,” said Mr. Wardale. “This poor 
lady, whose death has occurred in so mysterious a 
manner, was the wife of a man who was, like myself, 
a servant of the Government of Sierra Leone. I was 
the friend of both of them; and in the absence of the 
husband, I should like to have the inquiry into the 
circumstances of this lady’s death watched by a com¬ 
petent lawyer with the necessary special knowledge 
of medical evidence. Will you or your colleague, 
Dr. Thorndyke, undertake to watch the case for 
me?” 


68 THE BLUE SCARAB 

Of course I was willing to undertake the case and 
said so. 

“Then,” said Mr. Wardale, “I will instruct my 
solicitor to write to you and formally retain you in 
the case. Here is my card. You will find my name 
in the Colonial Office List, and you know my address 
here.” 

He handed me his card, wished us both good after¬ 
noon, and then, with a stiff little bow, turned and took 
his departure. 

“I think I had better run up to town and confer 
with Thorndyke,” said I. “How do the trains run?” 

“There is a good train in about three-quarters of 
an hour,” replied Foxton. 

“Then I will go by it, but I shall come down again 
to-morrow or the next day, and probably Thorndyke 
will come down with me.” 

“Very well,” said Foxton. “Bring him in to lunch 
or dinner, but I can’t put him up, I am afraid.” 

“It would be better not,” said I. “Your friend, 
Platt, wouldn’t like it. He won’t want Thorndyke— 
or me either for that matter. And what about those 
photographs? Thorndyke will want them, you know.” 

“He can’t have them,” said Foxton doggedly, “un¬ 
less Platt is willing to hand them back; which I don’t 
suppose he will be.” 

I had private reasons for thinking otherwise, but 
I kept them to myself; and as Foxton went forth on 
his afternoon round, I returned upstairs to pack my 


CASE OF THE WHITE FOOT-PRINTS 69 

suit-case and write the telegram to Thorndyke inform¬ 
ing him of my movements. 

It was only a quarter past five when I let myself 
into our chambers in King’s Bench Walk. To my 
relief I found my colleague at home and our labora¬ 
tory assistant, Polton, in the act of laying tea for 
two. 

“I gather,” said Thorndyke, as we shook hands, 
“that my learned brother brings grist to the mill?” 

“Yes,” I replied. “Nominally a watching brief, but 
I think you will agree with me that it is a case for 
independent investigation.” 

“Will there be anything in my line, sir?” inquired 
Polton, who was always agog at the word “investiga¬ 
tion.” 

“There is a film to be developed. Four exposures 
of white footprints on a dark ground.” 

“Ah!” said Polton, “you’ll want good strong nega¬ 
tives and they ought to be enlarged if they are from 
the little camera. Can you give me the dimensions?” 

I wrote out the measurements from my notebook 
and handed him the paper together with the spool 
of film, with which he retired gleefully to the labora¬ 
tory. 

“And now, Jervis,” said Thorndyke, “while Polton 
is operating on the film and we are discussing our tea, 
let us have a sketch of the case.” 

I gave him more than a sketch, for the events were 


THE BLUE SCARAB 


70 

recent and I had carefully sorted out the facts 
during my journey to town, making rough notes 
which I now consulted. To my rather lengthy recital 
he listened in his usual attentive manner, without any 
comment, excepting in regard to my manoeuvre to 
retain possession of the exposed film. 

“It’s almost a pity you didn’t refuse,” said he. 
“They could hardly have enforced their demand, and 
my feeling is that it is more convenient as well as 
more dignified to avoid direct deception unless one is 
driven to it. But perhaps you considered that you 
were.” 

As a matter of fact I had at the time, but I had 
since come to Thorndyke’s opinion. My little 
manoeuvre was going to be a source of inconvenience 
presently. 

“Well,” said Thorndyke, when I had finished my 
recital, “I think we may take it that the police theory 
is, in the main, your own theory derived from Fox- 
ton.” 

“I think so, excepting that I learn from Foxton that 
Superintendent Platt has obtained the complete finger¬ 
prints of a right hand.” 

Thorndyke raised his eyebrows. “Finger-prints!” 
he exclaimed. “Why the fellow must be a mere 
simpleton. But there,” he added, “everybody—police, 
lawyers, judges, even Galton himself—seems to lose 
every vestige of common sense as soon as the subject 
of finger-prints is raised. But it would be interesting 
to know how he got them and what they are like. 


CASE OF THE WHITE FOOT-PRINTS 71 


We must try to find that out. However, to return 
to your case, since your theory and the police theory 
are probably the same, we may as well consider the 
value of your inferences. 

“At present we are dealing with the case in the 
abstract. Our data are largely assumptions, and our 
inferences are largely derived from an application of 
the mathematical laws of probability. Thus we as¬ 
sume that a murder has been committed, whereas it 
may turn out to have been suicide. We assume the 
murder to have been committed by the person 
who made the footprints, and we assume that that 
person has no little toes, whereas he may have re¬ 
tracted little toes which do not touch the ground and 
so leave no impression. Assuming the little toes to 
be absent, we account for their absence by consider¬ 
ing known causes in the order of their probability. 
Excluding—quite properly, I think—Raynaud’s dis¬ 
ease, we arrive at frost-bite and ergotism. But two 
persons, both of whom are of a stature corresponding 
to the size of the footprints, may have had a motive 
—though a very inadequate one—for committing the 
crime, and both have been exposed to the conditions 
which tend to produce frost-bite, while one of them 
has probably been exposed to the conditions which 
tend to produce ergotism. The laws of probability 
point to both of these two men; and the chances in 
favour of the Swede being the murderer rather than 
the Canadian would be represented by the common 
factor—frost-bite—multiplied by the additional fac- 


72 


THE BLUE SCARAB 


tor, ergotism. But this is purely speculative at pres¬ 
ent. There is no evidence that either man has ever 
been frost-bitten or has ever eaten spurred rye. Nev¬ 
ertheless, it is a perfectly sound method at this stage. 
It indicates a line of investigation. If it should tran¬ 
spire that either man has suffered from frost-bite or 
ergotism, a definite advance would have been made. 
But here is Polton with a couple of finished prints. 
How on earth did you manage it in the time, Polton?” 

“Why, you see, sir, I just dried the film with 
spirit,” replied Polton. “It saves a lot of time. I 
will let you have a pair of enlargements in about a 
quarter of an hour.” 

Handing us the two wet prints, each stuck on a 
glass plate, he retired to the laboratory, and Thorn- 
dyke and I proceeded to scrutinize the photographs 
with the aid of our pocket lenses. The promised en¬ 
largements were really hardly necessary excepting for 
the purpose of comparative measurements, for the 
image of the white footprint, fully two inches long, 
was so microscopically sharp that, with the assist¬ 
ance of the lens, the minutest detail could be clearly 
seen. 

“There is certainly not a vestige of little toe,” re¬ 
marked Thorndyke, “and the plump appearance of 
the other toes supports your rejection of Raynaud’s 
disease. Does the character of the footprint convey 
any other suggestion to you, Jervis?” 

“It gives me the impression that the man had been 
accustomed to go bare-footed in early life and had 


CASE OF THE WHITE FOOT-PRINTS 73 

only taken to boots comparatively recently. The po¬ 
sition of the great toe suggests this, and the presence 
of a number of small scars on the toes and ball of 
the foot seems to confirm it. A person walking bare¬ 
foot would sustain innumerable small wounds from 
treading on small, sharp objects.” 

Thorndyke looked dissatisfied. “I agree with you,” 
he said, “as to the suggestion offered by the unde¬ 
formed state of the great toes; but those little pits 
do not convey to me the impression of scars produced 
as you suggest. Still, you may be right.” 

Here our conversation was interrupted by a knock 
on the outer oak. Thorndyke stepped out through 
the lobby and I heard him open the door. A mo¬ 
ment or two later he re-entered, accompanied by a 
short, brown-faced gentleman whom I instantly recog¬ 
nized as Mr. Wardale. 

“I must have come up by the same train as you ” 
he remarked, as we shook hands, “and to a certain 
extent, I suspect, on the same errand. I thought I 
would like to put our arrangement on a business foot¬ 
ing, as I am a stranger to both of you.” 

“What do you want us to do?” asked Thorndyke. 

“I want you to watch the case, and, if necessary, 
to look into the facts independently.” 

“Can you give us any information that may help 

us?” # 

Mr. Wardale reflected. “I don’t think I can, he said 
at length. “I have no facts that you have not, and 
any surmises of mine might be misleading. I had 


THE BLUE SCARAB 


74 

rather you kept an open mind. But perhaps we 
might go into the question of costs.” 

This, of course, was somewhat difficult, but Thorn- 
dyke contrived to indicate the probable liabilities in¬ 
volved to Mr. Wardale’s satisfaction. 

“There is one other little matter,” said Wardale as 
he rose to depart. “I have got a suit-case here which 
Mrs. Beddingfield lent me to bring some things up 
to town. It is one that Mr. Macauley left behind 
when he went away from the boarding-house. Mrs. 
Beddingfield suggested that I might leave it at his 
chambers when I had finished with it; but I don’t 
know his address, excepting that it is somewhere in 
the Temple, and I don’t want to meet the fellow if he 
should happen to have come up to town.” 

“Is it empty?” asked Thorndyke. 

“Excepting for a suit of pyjamas and a pair of 
shocking old slippers.” He opened the suit-case as 
he spoke and exhibited its contents with a grin. 

“Characteristic of a negro, isn’t it? Pink silk 
pyjamas and slippers about three sizes too small.” 

“Very well,” said Thorndyke. “I will get my man 
to find out the address and leave it there.” 

As Mr. Wardale went out, Polton entered with the 
enlarged photographs, which showed the footprints 
the natural size. Thorndyke handed them to me, and 
as I sat down to examine them he followed his as¬ 
sistant to the laboratory. He returned in a few min¬ 
utes, and after a brief inspection of the photographs, 
remarked: 


CASE OF THE WHITE FOOT-PRINTS 75 

“They show us nothing more than we have seen, 
though they may be useful later. So your stock of 
facts is all we have to go on at present. Are you 
going home to-night ?” 

“Yes, I shall go back to Margate to-morrow.” 

“Then, as I have to call at Scotland Yard, we may 
as well walk to Charing Cross together.” 

As we walked down the Strand we gossiped on 
general topics, but before we separated at Charing 
Cross, Thorndyke reverted to the case. 

“Let me know the date of the inquest,” said he, 
“and try to find out what the poison was—if it was 
really a poison.” 

“The liquid that was left in the bottle seemed to 
be a watery solution of some kind,” said I, “as I think 
I mentioned.” 

“Yes,” said Thorndyke. “Possibly a watery infu¬ 
sion of strophanthus.” 

“Why strophanthus?” I asked. 

“Why not?” demanded Thorndyke. And with this 
and an inscrutable smile, he turned and walked down 
Whitehall. 

Three days later I found myself at Margate sitting 
beside Thorndyke in a room adjoining the Town Hall, 
in which the inquest on the death of Mrs. Toussaint 
was to be held. Already the coroner was in his chair, 
the jury were in their seats and the witnesses assem¬ 
bled in a group of chairs apart. These included Fox- 
ton, a stranger who sat by him—presumably the other 


THE BLUE SCARAB 


76 

medical witness—Mrs. Beddingfield, Mr. Wardale, 
the police superintendent and a well-dressed coloured 
man, whom I correctly assumed to be Mr. Macauley. 

As I sat by my rather sphinx-like colleague my 
mind recurred for the hundredth time to his extraor¬ 
dinary powers of mental synthesis. That parting re¬ 
mark of his as to the possible nature of the poison 
had brought home to me in a flash the fact that he 
already had a definite theory of this crime, and that 
his theory was not mine nor that of the police. True, 
the poison might not be strophanthus, after all, but 
that would not alter the position. He had a theory 
of the crime, but yet he was in possession of no facts 
excepting those with which I had supplied him. 
Therefore those facts contained the material for a 
theory, whereas I had deduced from them nothing 
but the bald, ambiguous mathematical probabilities. 

The first witness called was naturally Dr. Foxton, 
who described the circumstances already known to 
me. He further stated that he had been present at 
the autopsy, that he had found on the throat and 
limbs of the deceased, bruises that suggested a strug¬ 
gle and violent restraint. The immediate cause of 
death was heart failure, but whether that failure was 
due to shock, terror, or the action of a poison he could 
not positively say. 

The next witness was a Dr. Prescott, an expert 
pathologist and toxicologist. He had made the 
autopsy and agreed with Dr. Foxton as to the cause 
of death. He had examined the liquid contained in 


CASE OF THE WHITE FOOT-PRINTS 77 

the bottle taken from the hand of the deceased and 
found it to be a watery infusion or decoction of 
strophanthus seeds. He had analyzed the fluid con¬ 
tained in the stomach and found it to consist largely 
of the same infusion. 

“Is infusion of strophanthus seeds used in medi¬ 
cine?^ the coroner asked. 

“No,” was the reply. “The tincture is the form 
in which strophanthus is administered unless it is 
given in the form of strophanthin.” 

“Do you consider that the strophanthus caused, or 
contributed to death?” 

“It is difficult to say,” replied Dr. Prescott. 
“Strophanthus is a heart poison, and there was a 
very large poisonous dose. But very little had been 
absorbed, and the appearances were not inconsistent 
with death from shock.” 

“Could death have been self-produced by the volun¬ 
tary taking of the poison?” asked the coroner. 

“I should say, decidedly not. Dr. Foxton’s evi¬ 
dence shows that the bottle was almost certainly 
placed in the hands of the deceased after death, and 
this is in complete agreement with the enormous dose 
and small absorption.” 

“Would you say that appearances point to suicidal 
or homicidal poisoning?” \ 

“I should say that they point to homicidal poison¬ 
ing, but that death was probably due mainly to 
shock.” 

This concluded the expert’s evidence. It was fol- 


THE BLUE SCARAB 


78 

lowed by that of Mrs. Beddingfield, which brought 
out nothing new to me but the fact that a trunk had 
been broken open and a small attache case belonging 
to the deceased abstracted and taken away. 

“Do you know what the deceased kept in that 
case?” the coroner asked. 

“I have seen her put her husband’s letters into it. 
She had quite a number of them. I don’t know what 
else she kept in it except, of course, her cheque book.” 

“Had she any considerable balance at the bank?” 

“I believe she had. Her husband used to send 
most of his pay home and she used to pay it in and 
leave it with the bank. She might have two or three 
hundred pounds to her credit.” 

As Mrs. Beddingfield concluded, Mr. Wardale was 
called, and he was followed by Mr. Macauley. The 
evidence of both was quite brief and concerned en¬ 
tirely with the disturbance made by Bergson, whose 
absence from the court I had already noted. 

The last witness was the police superintendent, and 
he, as I had expected, was decidedly reticent. He 
did refer to the footprints but, like Foxton—who pre¬ 
sumably had his instructions—he abstained from de¬ 
scribing their peculiarities. Nor did he say anything 
about finger-prints. As to the identity of the criminal, 
that had to be further inquired into. Suspicion had 
at first fastened upon Bergson, but it had since tran¬ 
spired that the Swede sailed from Ramsgate on an 
ice-ship two days before the occurrence of the tragedy. 
Then suspicion had pointed to the husband, who was 


CASE OF THE WHITE FOOT-PRINTS 79 

known to have landed at Liverpool four days before 
the death of his wife and who had mysteriously dis¬ 
appeared. But he (the superintendent) had only that 
morning received a telegram from the Liverpool police 
informing him that the body of Toussaint had been 
found floating in the Mersey, and that it bore a num¬ 
ber of wounds of an apparently homicidal character. 
Apparently he had been murdered and his corpse 
thrown into the river. 

“This is very terrible,” said the coroner. “Does 
this second murder throw any light on the case which 
we are investigating?” 

“I think it does,” replied the officer, without any 
great conviction, however, “but it is not advisable to 
go into details.” 

“Quite so,” agreed the coroner. “Most inexpedient. 
But are we to understand that you have a clue to the 
perpetrator of this crime—assuming a crime to have 
been committed?” 

“Yes,” replied Platt. “We have several important 

clues.” ... l:j „ 

“And do they point to any particular individual? 
The superintendent hesitated. “Well— 1 ” he began, 
with some embarrassment, but the coroner interrupted 

him. , 

“Perhaps the question is indiscreet. We mustn t 
hamper the police, gentlemen, and the point is not 
really material to our inquiry. You would rather we 
waived that question, superintendent?” . 

“If you please, sir,” was the emphatic reply. 


So 


THE BLUE SCARAB 


“Have any cheques from the deceased woman’s 
cheque-book been presented at the bank?” 

“Not since her death. I inquired at the bank only 
this morning.” 

This concluded the evidence, and after a brief but 
capable summing-up by the coroner, the jury returned 
a verdict of “wilful murder against some person un¬ 
known.” 

As the proceedings terminated, Thorndyke rose and 
turned round, and then to my surprise I perceived 
Superintendent Miller, of the Criminal Investigation 
Department, who had come in unperceived by me and 
was sitting immediately behind us. 

“I have followed your instructions, sir,” said he, 
addressing Thorndyke, “but before we take any defi¬ 
nite action I should like to have a few words with 
you.” 

He led the way to an adjoining room and, as we 
entered, we were followed by Superintendent Platt 
and Dr. Foxton. 

“Now, doctor,” said Miller, carefully closing the 
door, “I have carried out your suggestions. Mr. 
Macauley is being detained, but before we commit 
ourselves to an arrest, we must have something to go 
upon. I shall want you to make out a prima facie 
case.” 

“Very well,” said Thorndyke, laying upon the table 
the small, green suit-case that was his almost invari¬ 
able companion. 

“I’ve seen that prima facie case before,” Miller re- 


CASE OF THE WHITE FOOT-PRINTS 81 


marked with a grin, as Thorndyke unlocked it and 
drew out a large envelope. “Now, what have you got 
there ?” 

As Thorndyke extracted from the envelope Polton’s 
enlargements of my small photographs, Platt’s eyes 
appeared to bulge, while Foxton gave me a quick 
glance of reproach. 

“These,” said Thorndyke, “are the full-sized photo¬ 
graphs of the footprints of the suspected murderer. 
Superintendent Platt can probably verify them.” 

Rather reluctantly Platt produced from his pocket 
a pair of whole-plate photographs, which he laid be¬ 
side the enlargements. 

“Yes,” said Miller, after comparing them, “they are 
the same footprints. But you say, doctor, that they 
are Macauley’s footprints. Now, what evidence have 
you?” 

Thorndyke again had recourse to the green case, 
from which he produced two copper plates mounted 
on wood and coated with printing ink. 

“I propose,” said he, lifting the plates out of their 
protecting frame, “that we take prints of Macauley’s 
feet and compare them with the photographs.” 

“Yes,” said Platt. “And then there are the finger¬ 
prints that we’ve got. We can test those, too.” 

“You don’t want finger-prints if you’ve got a set 
of toe-prints,” objected Miller. 

“With regard to those finger-prints,” said Thorn¬ 
dyke. “May I ask if they were obtained from the 
bottle?” 


82 


THE BLUE SCARAB 


“They were,” Platt admitted. 

“And were there any other finger-prints?” 

“No,” replied Platt. “These were the only ones.” 

As he spoke he laid on the table a photograph show¬ 
ing the prints of the thumb and fingers of a right 
hand. 

Thorndyke glanced at the photograph and, turning 
to Miller, said: 

“I suggest that those are Dr. Foxton’s finger¬ 
prints.” 

“Impossible!” exclaimed Platt, and then suddenly 
fell silent. 

“We can soon see,” said Thorndyke, producing from 
the case a pad of white paper. “If Dr. Foxton will 
lay the finger-tips of his right hand first on this inked 
plate and then on the paper, we can compare the 
prints with the photograph.” 

Foxton placed his fingers on the blackened plate 
and then pressed them on the paper pad, leaving on 
the latter four beautifully clear, black finger-prints. 
These Superintendent Platt scrutinized eagerly, and 
as his glance travelled from the prints to the photo¬ 
graphs, he broke into a sheepish grin. 

“Sold again!” he muttered. “They are the same 
prints.” 

“Well,” said Miller in a tone of disgust, “you must 
have been a mug not to have thought of that when 
you knew that Dr. Foxton had handled the bottle.” 

“The fact, however, is important,” said Thorndyke. 


CASE OF THE WHITE FOOT-PRINTS 83 

“The absence of any finger-prints but Dr. Foxton’s 
not only suggests that the murderer took the precau¬ 
tion to wear gloves, but especially it proves that the 
bottle was not handled by the deceased during life. 
A suicide’s hands will usually be pretty moist and 
would leave conspicuous, if not very clear/ impres¬ 
sions.” 

“Yes,” agreed Miller, “that is quite true. But with 
regard to these footprints. We can’t compel this man 
to let us examine his feet without arresting him. 
Don’t think, Dr. Thorndyke, that I suspect you of 
guessing. I’ve known you too long for that. You’ve 
got your facts all right, I don’t doubt, but you must 
let us have enough to justify our arrest.” 

Thorndyke’s answer was to plunge once more into 
the inexhaustible green case, from which he now pro¬ 
duced two objects wrapped in tissue paper. The 
paper being removed, there was revealed what looked 
like a model of an excessively shabby pair of brown 
shoes. 

“These,” said Thorndyke, exhibiting the “models” 
to Superintendent Miller—who viewed them with an 
undisguised grin—“are plaster casts of the interiors of 
a pair of slippers—very old and much too tight—be¬ 
longing to Mr. Macauley. His name was written 
inside them. The casts have been waxed and painted 
with raw umber, which has been lightly rubbed off, 
thus accentuating the prominences and depressions. 
You will notice that the impressions of the toes on the 


THE BLUE SCARAB 


84 

soles and of the ‘knuckles’ on the uppers appear as 
prominences; in fact we have in these casts a sketchy 
reproduction of the actual feet. 

“Now, first as to dimensions. Dr. Jervis’s measure¬ 
ments of the footprints give us ten inches and three- 
quarters as the extreme length and four inches and 
five-eighths as the extreme width at the heads of the 
metatarsus. On these casts, as you see, the extreme 
length is ten inches and five-eighths—the loss of one- 
eighth being accounted for by the curve of the sole— 
and the extreme width is four inches and a quarter— 
three-eighths being accounted for by the lateral com¬ 
pression of a tight slipper. The agreement of the 
dimensions is remarkable, considering the unusual 
size. And now as to the peculiarities of the feet. 
You notice that each toe has made a perfectly distinct 
impression on the sole, excepting the little toe, of 
which there is no trace in either cast. And, turning 
to the uppers, you notice that the knuckles of the 
toes appear quite distinct and prominent—again ex¬ 
cepting the little toes, which have made no impression 
at all. Thus it is not a case of retracted little toes, 
for they would appear as an extra prominence. Then, 
looking at the feet as a whole, it is evident that the 
little toes are absent; there is a distinct hollow where 
there should be a prominence.” 

“M’yes,” said Miller dubiously, “it’s all very neat. 
But isn’t it just a bit speculative?” 

“Oh, come, Miller,” protested Thorndyke; “just 
consider the facts. Here is a suspected murderer 


CASE OF THE WHITE FOOT-PRINTS 85 

known to have feet of an unusual size and presenting 
a very rare deformity; and here are a pair of feet 
of that same unusual size and presenting that same 
rare deformity; and they are the feet of a man who 
had actually lived in the same house as the murdered 
woman and who, at the date of the crime, was living 
only two doors away. What more would you have?” 

“Well, there is the question of motive,” objected 
Miller. 

“That hardly belongs to a prima facie case,” said 
Thorndyke. “But even if it did, is there not ample 
matter for suspicion? Remember who the murdered 
woman was, what her husband was, and who this 
Sierra Leone gentleman is.” 

“Yes, yes; that’s true,” said Miller somewhat hast¬ 
ily, either perceiving the drift of Thorndyke’s argu¬ 
ment (which I did not), or being unwilling to admit 
that he was still in the dark. “Yes, we’ll have the 
fellow in and get his actual footprints.” 

He went to the door and, putting his head out, 
made some sign, which was almost immediately fol¬ 
lowed by a trampling of feet, and Macauley entered 
the room, followed by two large plain-clothes police¬ 
men. The negro was evidently alarmed, for he looked 
about him with the wild expression of a hunted ani¬ 
mal. But his manner was aggressive and trucu¬ 
lent. 

“Why am I being interfered with in this imperti¬ 
nent manner?” he demanded in the deep, buzzing 
voice characteristic of the male negro. 


86 


THE BLUE SCARAB 


“We want to have a look at your feet, Mr. 
Macauley,” said Miller. “Will you kindly take off 
your shoes and socks ?” 

“No,” roared Macauley. “I J 11 see you damned 
first.” 

“Then,” said Miller, “I arrest you on a charge of 
having murdered-” 

The rest of the sentence was drowned in a sudden 
uproar. The tall, powerful negro, bellowing like an 
angry bull, had whipped out a large, strangely shaped 
knife and charged furiously at the Superintendent. 
But the two plain-clothes men had been watching him 
from behind and now sprang upon him, each seizing 
an arm. Two sharp, metallic clicks in quick succes¬ 
sion, a thunderous crash and an ear-splitting yell, and 
the formidable barbarian lay prostrate on the floor 
with one massive constable sitting astride his chest 
and the other seated on his knees. 

“Now’s your chance, doctor,” said Miller. “I’ll get 
his shoes and socks off.” 

As Thorndyke re-inked his plates, Miller and the 
local superintendent expertly removed the smart 
patent shoes and the green silk socks from the feet 
of the writhing, bellowing negro. Then Thorndyke 
rapidly and skilfully applied the inked plates to the* 
soles of the feet—which I steadied for the purpose— 
and followed up with a dexterous pressure of the 
paper pad, first to one foot and then—having torn 
off the printed sheet—to the other. In spite of the 
difficulties occasioned by Macauley’s struggles, each 


CASE OF THE WHITE FOOT-PRINTS 87 

sheet presented a perfectly clear and sharp print of 
the sole of the foot, even the ridge-patterns of the 
toes and ball of the foot being quite distinct. Thorn- 
dyke laid each of the new prints on the table beside 
the corresponding large photograph, and invited the 
two superintendents to compare them. 

“Yes,” said Miller—and Superintendent Platt nod¬ 
ded his acquiescence—“there can’t be a shadow of a 
doubt. The ink-prints and the photographs are iden¬ 
tical, to every line and skin-marking. You’ve made 
out your case, doctor, as you always do.” 

“So you see,” said Thorndyke, as we smoked our 
evening pipes on the old stone pier, “your method was 
a perfectly sound one, only you didn’t apply it prop¬ 
erly. Like too many mathematicians, you started on 
your calculations before you had secured your data. 
If you had applied the simple laws of probability to 
the real data, they would have pointed straight to 
Macauley.” 

“How do you suppose he lost his little toes?” I 
asked. 

“I don’t suppose at all. Obviously it was a case of 
double ainhum.” 

“Ainhum!” I exclaimed with a sudden flash of recol¬ 
lection. 

“Yes; that was what you overlooked. You com¬ 
pared the probabilities of three diseases either of 
which only very rarely causes the loss of even one 
little toe and infinitely rarely causes the loss of both, 


88 


THE BLUE SCARAB 


and none of which conditions is confined to any defi¬ 
nite class of persons; and you ignored ainhum, a dis¬ 
ease which attacks almost exclusively the little toe, 
causing it to drop off, and quite commonly destroys 
both little toes—a disease, moreover, which is con¬ 
fined to the black-skinned races. In European prac¬ 
tice ainhum is unknown, but in Africa, and to a less 
extent, in India, it is quite common. If you were to 
assemble all the men in the world who have lost both 
little toes, more than nine-tenths of them would be 
suffering from ainhum; so that, by the laws of proba¬ 
bility, your footprints were, by nine chances to one, 
those of a man who had suffered from ainhum, and 
therefore a black-skinned man. But as soon as you 
had established a black man as the probable criminal, 
you opened up a new field of corroborative evidence. 
There was a black man on the spot. That man was 
a native of Sierra Leone and almost certainly a man 
of importance there. But the victim’s husband had 
deadly enemies in the native secret societies of Sierra 
Leone. The letters of the husband to the wife prob¬ 
ably contained matter incriminating certain natives of 
Sierra Leone. The evidence became cumulative, you 
see. Taken as a whole, it pointed plainly to Macauley, 
apart from the new fact of the murder of Toussaint 
in Liverpool, a city with a considerable floating popu¬ 
lation of West Africans.” 

“And I gather from your reference to the African 
poison, strophanthus, that you fixed on Macauley at 
once when I gave you my sketch of the case?” 


CASE OF THE WHITE FOOT-PRINTS 89 

“Yes; especially when I saw your photographs of 
the footprints with the absent little toes and those 
characteristic chigger-scars on the toes that remained. 
But it was sheer luck that enabled me to fit the key¬ 
stone into its place and turn mere probability into vir¬ 
tual certainty. I could have embraced the magician 
Wardale when he brought us the magic slippers. Still, 
it isn’t an absolute certainty, even now, though I ex¬ 
pect it will be by to-morrow.” 

And Thorndyke was right. That very evening the 
police entered Macauley’s chambers in Tanfield Court, 
where they discovered the dead woman’s attache case. 
It still contained Toussaint’s letters to his wife, and 
one of those letters mentioned by name, as members 
of a dangerous secret society, several prominent Sierra 
Leone men, including the accused David Macauley. 


Ill 


THE NEW JERSEY SPHINX 
RATHER curious neighbourhood this, Jer¬ 



vis,” my friend Thorndyke remarked as we 


turned into Upper Bedford Place; “a sort of 
temporary aviary for cosmopolitan birds of passage, 
especially those of the Oriental variety. The Asiatic 
and African faces that one sees at the windows of 
these Bloomsbury boarding-houses almost suggest an 
overflow from the ethnographical galleries of the ad¬ 
jacent British Museum.” 

“Yes,” I agreed, “there must be quite a consider¬ 
able population of Africans, Japanese and Hindus in 
Bloomsbury; particularly Hindus.” 

As I spoke, and as if in illustration of my statement, 
a dark-skinned man rushed out of one of the houses 
farther down the street and began to advance towards 
us in a rapid, bewildered fashion, stopping to look at 
each street door as he came to it. His hatless condi¬ 
tion—though he was exceedingly well dressed—and 
his agitated manner immediately attracted my atten¬ 
tion, and Thorndyke’s too, for the latter remarked, 
“Our friend seems to be in trouble. An accident, 
perhaps, or a case of sudden illness.” 

Here the stranger, observing our approach, ran 
forward to meet us and asked in an agitated tone, 


THE NEW JERSEY SPHINX 91 

“Can you tell me, please, where I can find a doctor?” 

“I am a medical man,” replied Thorndyke, “and so 
is my friend.” 

Our acquaintance grasped Thorndyke’s sleeve and 
exclaimed eagerly: 

“Come with me, then, quickly if you please. A 
most dreadful thing has happened.” 

He hurried us along at something between a trot 
and a quick walk, and as we proceeded he continued 
excitedly, “I am quite confused and terrified; it is all 
so strange and sudden and terrible.” 

“Try,” said Thorndyke, “to calm yourself a little 
and tell us what has happened.” 

“I will,” was the agitated reply. “It is my cousin, 
Dinanath Byramji—his surname is the same as mine. 
Just now I went to his room and was horrified to 
find him lying on the floor, staring at the ceiling 
and blowing—like this,” and he puffed out his 
cheeks with a soft blowing noise. “I spoke to him 
and shook his hand, but he was like a dead man. 
This is the house.” 

He darted up the steps to an open door at which 
a rather scared page-boy was on guard, and running 
along the hall, rapidfy ascended the stairs. Following 
him closely, we reached a rather dark first-door land¬ 
ing where, at a half-open door, a servant-maid stood 
listening with an expression of awe to a rhythmical 
snoring sound that issued from the room. 

The unconscious man lay as Mr. Byramji had said, 
staring fixedly at the ceiling with wide-open, glazy 


THE BLUE SCARAB 


92 

eyes, puffing out his cheeks slightly at each breath. 
But the breathing was shallow and slow, and it grew 
perceptibly slower, with lengthening pauses. And 
even as I was timing it with my watch while Thorn- 
dyke examined the pupils with the aid of a wax match, 
it stopped. I laid my finger on the wrist and caught 
one or two slow, flickering beats. Then the pulse 
stopped too. 

“He is gone,” said I. “He must have burst one of 
the large arteries.” 

“Apparently,” said Thorndyke, “though one would 
not have expected it at his age. But wait! What is 
this?” 

He pointed to the right ear, in the hollow of which 
a few drops of blood had collected, and as he spoke 
he drew his hand gently over the dead man’s head 
and moved it slightly from side to side. 

“There is a fracture of the base of the skull,” said 
he, “and quite distinct signs of contusion of the 
scalp.” He turned to Mr. Byramji, who stood wring¬ 
ing his hands and gazing incredulously at the dead 
man, and asked: 

“Can you throw any light on this?” 

The Indian looked at him vacantly. The sudden 
tragedy seemed to have paralyzed his brain. “I don’t 
understand,” said he. “What does it mean?” 

“It means,” replied Thorndyke, “that he has re¬ 
ceived a heavy blow on the head.” 

For a few moments Mr. Byramji continued to stare 
vacantly at my colleague. Then he seemed suddenly 


THE NEW JERSEY SPHINX 93 

to realize the import of Thorndyke’s reply, for he 
started up excitedly and turned to the door, outside 
which the two servants were hovering. 

“Where is the person gone who came in with my 
cousin? 57 he demanded. 

“You saw him go out, Albert,” said the maid. “Tell 
Mr. Byramji where he went to.” 

The page tiptoed into the room with a fearful eye 
fixed on the corpse, and replied falteringly, “I only 
see the back of him as he went out, and all I know 
is that he turned to the left. P’raps he’s gone for a 
doctor.” 

“Can you give us any description of him?” asked 
Thorndyke. 

“I only see the back of him,” repeated the page. 
“He was a shortish gentleman and he had on a dark 
suit of clothes and a hard felt hat. That’s all I know. 

“Thank you,” said Thorndyke. “We may want to 
ask you some more questions presently,” and having 
conducted the page to the door, he shut it and turned 
to Mr. Byramji. 

“Have you any idea who it was that was with your 
cousin?” he asked. 

“None at all,” was the reply. “I was sitting in my 
room opposite, writing, when I heard my cousin come 
up the stairs with another person, to whom he was 
talking. I could not hear what he was saying. They 
went into his room—this room—and I could occa¬ 
sionally catch the sound of their voices. In about a 
quarter of an hour I heard the door open and shut, 


THE BLUE SCARAB 


94 

and then some one went downstairs, softly and rather 
quickly. I finished the letter that I was writing, and 
when I had addressed it I came in here to ask my 
cousin who the visitor was. I thought it might be 
some one who had come to negotiate for the ruby.” 

“The ruby!” exclaimed Thorndyke. “What ruby 
do you refer to?” 

“The great ruby,” replied Byramji. “But of course 

you have not-” He broke off suddenly and stood 

for a few moments staring at Thorndyke with parted 
lips and wide-open eyes; then abruptly he turned, and 
kneeling beside the dead man he began, in a curious, 
caressing, half-apologetic manner, first to pass his 
hand gently over the body at the waist and then to 
unfasten the clothes. This brought into view a hand¬ 
some, soft leather belt, evidently of native workman¬ 
ship, worn next to the skin and furnished with three 
pockets. Mr. Byramji unbuttoned and explored them 
in quick succession, and it was evident that they were 
all empty. 

“It is gone!” he exclaimed in low, intense tones. 
“Gone! Ah! But how little would it signify! But 
thou, dear Dinanath, my brother, my friend, thou art 
gone, too!” 

He lifted the dead man’s hand and pressed it to his 
cheek, murmuring endearments in his own tongue. 
Presently he laid it down reverently, and sprang up, 
and I was startled at the change in his aspect. The 
delicate, gentle, refined face had suddenly become the 
face of a Fury—fierce, sinister, vindictive. 



95 


THE NEW JERSEY SPHINX 

“This wretch must die!” he exclaimed huskily. 
“This sordid brute who, without compunction, has 
crushed out a precious life as one would carelessly 
crush a fly, for the sake of a paltry crystal—he must 
die, if I have to follow him and strangle him with 
my own hands!” 

Thorndyke laid his hand on Byramji’s shoulder. “I 
sympathize with you most cordially,” said he. “If it 
is as you think, and appearances suggest, that your 
cousin has been murdered as a mere incident of rob¬ 
bery, the murderer’s life is forfeit, and Justice cries 
aloud for retribution. The fact of murder will be 
determined, for or against, by a proper inquiry. 
Meanwhile we have to ascertain who this unknown 
man is and what happened while he was with your 
cousin.” 

Byramji made a gesture of despair. “But the man 
has disappeared, and nobody has seen him! What 
can we do?” 

“Let us look around us,” replied Thorndyke, “and 
see if we can judge what has happened in this room. 
What, for instance, is this?” 

He picked up from a corner near the door a small 
leather object, which he handed to Mr. Byramji. 
The Indian seized it eagerly, exclaiming: 

“Ah! It is the little bag in which my cousin used 
to carry the ruby. So he had taken it from his 
belt.” 

“It hasn’t been dropped, by any chance?” I sug¬ 
gested. 


96 


THE BLUE SCARAB 


In an instant Mr. Byramji was down on his knees, 
peering and groping about the floor, and Thorndyke 
and I joined in the search. But, as might have been 
expected, there was no sign of the ruby, nor, indeed, 
of anything else, excepting a hat which I picked up 
from under the table. 

“No,” said Mr. Byramji, rising with a dejected air. 
“It is gone—of course it is gone, and the murderous 
villain-” 

Here his glance fell on the hat, which I had laid on 
the table, and he bent forward to look at it. 

“Whose hat is this?” he demanded, glancing at the 
chair on which Thorndyke’s hat and mine had been 
placed. 

“Is it not your cousin’s?” asked Thorndyke. 

“No, certainly not. His hat was like mine—we 
bought them both together. It had a white silk lining 
with his initials, D.B., in gold. This has no lining 
and is a much older hat. It must be the murderer’s 
hat.” 

“If it is,” said Thorndyke, “that is a most impor¬ 
tant fact—important in two respects. Could you let 
us see your hat?” 

“Certainly,” replied Byramji, walking quickly, but 
with a soft tread, to the door. As he went out, shut¬ 
ting the door silently behind him, Thorndyke picked 
up the derelict hat and swiftly tried it on the head of 
the dead man. As far as I could judge, it appeared 
to fit, and this Thorndyke confirmed as he replaced 
it on the table. 



THE NEW JERSEY SPHINX 97 

“As you see,” said he, “it is at least a practicable 
fit, which is a fact of some significance.” 

Here Mr. Byramji returned with his own hat, which 
he placed on the table by the side of the other, and 
thus placed, crown uppermost, the two hats were 
closely similar. Both were black, hard felts of the 
prevalent “bowler” shape, and of good quality, and 
the difference in their age and state of preservation 
was not striking; but when Byramji turned them over 
and exhibited their interiors it was seen that whereas 
the strange hat was unlined save for the leather head- 
band, Byramji’s had a white silk lining and bore the 
owner’s initials in embossed gilt letters. 

“What happened,” said Thorndyke, when he had 
carefully compared the two hats, “seems fairly ob¬ 
vious. The two men, on entering, placed their hats 
crown upwards on the table. In some way—perhaps 
during a struggle—the visitor’s hat was knocked down 
and rolled under the table. Then the stranger, on 
leaving, picked up the only visible hat—almost iden¬ 
tically similar to his own—and put it on.” 

“Is it not rather singular,” I asked, “that he should 
not have noticed the different feel of a strange hat? ’ 

“I think not,” Thorndyke replied. “If he noticed 
anything unusual he would probably assume that he 
had put it on the wrong way round. Remember that 
he would be extremely hurried and agitated. And 
when once he had left the house he would not dare 
to take the risk of returning, though he would doubt¬ 
less realize the gravity of the mistake. And now, 


THE BLUE SCARAB 


98 

he continued, “would you mind giving us a few par¬ 
ticulars? You have spoken of a great ruby, which 
your cousin had, and which seems to be missing.” 

“Yes. You shall come to my room and I will tell 
you about it; but first let us lay my poor cousin de¬ 
cently on his bed.” 

“I think,” said Thorndyke, “the body ought not to 
be moved until the police have seen it.” 

“Perhaps you are right,” Byramji agreed reluc¬ 
tantly, “though it seems callous to leave him lying 
there.” With a sigh he turned to the door, and 
Thorndyke followed, carrying the two hats. 

“My cousin and I,” said our host, when we were 
seated in his own large bed-sitting room, “were both 
interested in gem-stones. I deal in all kinds of stones 
that are found in the East, but Dinanath dealt almost 
exclusively in rubies. He was a very fine judge of 
those beautiful gems, and he used to make periodical 
tours in Burma in search of uncut rubies of unusual 
size or quality. About four months ago he acquired 
at Mogok, in Upper Burma, a magnificent specimen 
over twenty-eight carats in weight, perfectly flawless 
and of the most gorgeous colour. It had been roughly 
cut, but my cousin was intending to have it recut 
unless he should receive an advantageous offer for it 
in the meantime.” 

“What would be the value of such a stone?” I 
asked. 

“It is impossible to say. A really fine large ruby 
of perfect colour is far, far more valuable than the 


THE NEW JERSEY SPHINX 99 

finest diamond of the same size. It is the most pre¬ 
cious of all gems, with the possible exception of the 
emerald. A fine ruby of five carats is worth about 
three thousand pounds, but, of course, the value rises 
out of all proportion with increasing size. Fifty thou¬ 
sand pounds would be a moderate price for Dinanath’s 
ruby.” 

During this recital I noticed that Thorndyke, while 
listening attentively, was turning the stranger’s hat 
over in his hands, narrowly scrutinizing it both inside 
and outside. As Byramji concluded, he remarked: 

“We shall have to let the police know what has 
happened, but, as my friend and I will be called as 
witnesses, I should like to examine this hat a little 
more closely before you hand it over to them. Could 
you let me have a small, hard brush? A dry nail¬ 
brush would do.” 

Our host complied readily—in fact eagerly. Thorn- 
dyke’s authoritative, purposeful manner had clearly 
impressed him, for he said as he handed my colleague 
a new nail-brush: “I thank you for your help and 
value it. We must not depend on the police only.” . 

Accustomed as I was to Thorndyke’s methods, his 
procedure was not unexpected, but Mr. Byramji 
watched him with breathless interest and no little sur¬ 
prise as, laying a sheet of note-paper on the table, 
he brought the hat close to it and brushed firmly but 
slowly, so that the dust dislodged should fall on it. 
As it was not a very well-kept hat, the yield was con¬ 
siderable, especially when the brush was drawn under 


IOO 


THE BLUE SCARAB 


the curl of the brim, and very soon the paper held 
quite a little heap. Then Thorndyke folded the paper 
into a small packet and having written “outside” on 
it, put it in his pocket-book. 

“Why do you do that?” Mr. Byramji asked. 
“What will the dust tell you?” 

“Probably nothing,” Thorndyke replied. “But this 
hat is our only direct clue to the identity of the man 
who was with your cousin, and we must make the 
most of it. Dust, you know, is only a mass of frag¬ 
ments detached from surrounding objects. If the 
objects are unusual the dust may be quite distinctive. 
You could easily identify the hat of a miller or a 
cement worker.” As he was speaking he reversed 
the hat and turned down the leather head-lining, 
whereupon a number of strips of folded paper fell 
down into the crown. 

“Ah!” exclaimed Byramji, “perhaps we shall learn 
something now.” 

He picked out the folded slips and began eagerly 
to open them out, and we examined them system¬ 
atically, one by one. But they were singularly disap¬ 
pointing and uninforming. Mostly they consisted of 
strips of newspaper, with one or two circulars, a leaf 
from a price list of gas stoves, a portion of a large 
envelope on which were the remains of an address 
which read “—n—don, W.C.,” and a piece of paper, 
evidently cut down vertically and bearing the right- 
hand half of some kind of list. This read: 


IOI 


THE NEW JERSEY SPHINX 

“—el 3 oz. 5 dwts. 

—eep 9)4 oz.” 

“Can you make anything of this?” I asked, hand¬ 
ing the paper to Thorndyke. 

He looked at it reflectively, and answered, as he 
copied it into his notebook: “It has, at least, some 
character. If we consider it with the other data we 
should get some sort of hint from it. But these scraps 
of paper don’t tell us much. Perhaps their most sug¬ 
gestive feature is their quantity and the way in which, 
as you have no doubt noticed, they were arranged at 
the sides of the hat. We had better replace them as 
we found them for the benefit of the police.” 

The nature of the suggestion to which he referred 
was not very obvious to me, but the presence of Mr. 
Byramji rendered discussion inadvisable; nor was 
there any opportunity, for we had hardly reconsti¬ 
tuted the hat when we became aware of a number of 
persons ascending the stairs, and then we heard the 
sound of rather peremptory rapping at the door of 
the dead man’s room. 

Mr. Byramji opened the door and went out on to 
the landing, where several persons had collected, in¬ 
cluding the two servants and a constable. 

“I understand,” said the policeman, “that there is 
something wrong here. Is that so?” 

“A very terrible thing has happened,” replied 
Byramji. “But the doctors can tell you better than 


102 


THE BLUE SCARAB 


I can.” Here he looked appealingly at Thorndyke, 
and we both went out and joined him. 

“A gentleman—Mr. Dinanath Byramji—has met 
with his death under somewhat suspicious circum¬ 
stances,” said Thorndyke, and, glancing at the knot 
of naturally curious persons on the landing, he con¬ 
tinued: “If you will come into the room where the 
death occurred, I will give you the facts so far as they 
are known to us.” 

With this he opened the door and entered the room 
with Mr. Byramji, the constable, and me. As the 
door opened, the bystanders craned forward and a 
middle-aged woman uttered a cry of horror and fol¬ 
lowed us into the room. 

“This is dreadful!” she exclaimed, with a shudder¬ 
ing glance at the corpse. “The servants told me about 
it when I came in just now and I sent Albert for the 
police at once. But what does it mean? You don’t 
think poor Mr. Dinanath has been murdered?” 

“We had better get the facts, ma’am,” said the con¬ 
stable, drawing out a large black notebook and laying 
his helmet on the table. He turned to Mr. Byramji, 
who had sunk into a chair and sat, the picture of 
grief, gazing at his dead cousin. “Would you kindly 
tell me what you know about how it happened?” 

Byramji repeated the substance of what he had told 
us, and when the constable had taken down his state¬ 
ment, Thorndyke and I gave the few medical par¬ 
ticulars that we could furnish and handed the con¬ 
stable our cards. Then, having helped to lay the 


THE NEW JERSEY SPHINX 103 

corpse on the bed and cover it with a sheet, we turned 
to take our leave. 

“You have been very kind,” Mr. Byramji said as 
he shook our hands warmly. “I am more than grate¬ 
ful. Perhaps I may be permitted to call on you and 
hear if—if you have learned anything fresh,” he con¬ 
cluded discreetly. 

“We shall be pleased to see you,” Thorndyke re¬ 
plied, “and to give you any help that we can”; and 
with this we took our departure, watched inquisitively 
down the stairs by the boarders and the servants who 
still lurked in the vicinity of the chamber of death. 

“If the police have no more information than we 
have,” I remarked as we walked homeward, “they 
won’t have much to go on.” 

“No,” said Thorndyke. “But you must remember 
that this crime—as we are justified in assuming it to 
be—is not an isolated one. It is the fourth of prac¬ 
tically the same kind within the last six months. I 
understand that the police have some kind of infor¬ 
mation respecting the presumed criminal, though it 
can’t be worth much, seeing that no arrest has been 
made. But there is some new evidence this time. 
The exchange of hats may help the police consid¬ 
erably.” 

“In what way? What evidence does it furnish?” 

“In the first place it suggests a hurried departure, 
which seems to connect the missing man with the 
crime. Then, he is wearing the dead man’s hat, and 
though he is not likely to continue wearing it, it may 


104 


THE BLUE SCARAB 


be seen and furnish a clue. We know that that hat 
fits him fairly and we know its size, so that we know 
the size of his head. Finally, we have the man’s own 
hat.” 

“I don’t fancy the police will get much information 
from that,” said I. 

“Probably not,” he agreed. “Yet it offered one or 
two interesting suggestions, as you probably ob¬ 
served.” 

“It made no suggestions whatever to me,” said I. 

“Then,” said Thorndyke, “I can only recommend 
you to recall our simple inspection and consider the 
significance of what we found.” 

This I had to accept as closing the discussion for 
the time being, and as I had to make a call at my 
bookseller’s concerning some reports that I had left 
to be bound, I parted from Thorndyke at the corner 
of Chichester Rents and left him to pursue his way 
alone. 

My business with the bookseller took me longer 
than I had expected, for I had to wait while the let¬ 
tering on the backs was completed, and when I ar¬ 
rived at our chambers in King’s Bench Walk, I found 
Thorndyke apparently at the final stage of some ex¬ 
periment evidently connected with our late adventure. 
The microscope stood on the table with one slide on 
the stage and a second one beside it; but Thorndyke 
had apparently finished his microscopical researches, 
for as I entered he held in his hand a test-tube filled 
with a smoky-coloured fluid. 


THE NEW JERSEY SPHINX 105 

“I see that you have been examining the dust from 
the hat,” said I. “Does it throw any fresh light on 
the case?” 

“Very little,” he replied. “It is just common dust 
—assorted fibres and miscellaneous organic and min¬ 
eral particles. But there are a couple of hairs from 
the inside of the hat—both lightish brown, and one 
of the atrophic, note-of-exclamation type that one 
finds at the margin of bald patches; and the outside 
dust shows minute traces of lead, apparently in the 
form of oxide. What do you make of that?” 

“Perhaps the man is a plumber or a painter,” I 
suggested. 

“Either is possible and worth considering,” he re¬ 
plied; but his tone made clear to me that this was 
not his own inference; and a row of five consecutive 
Post Office Directories, which I had already noticed 
ranged along the end of the table, told me that he had 
not only formed a hypothesis on the subject, but had 
probably either confirmed or disproved it. For the 
Post Office Directory was one of Thorndyke’s favour¬ 
ite books of reference; and the amount of curious 
and recondite information that he succeeded in ex¬ 
tracting from its matter-of-fact pages would have sur¬ 
prised no one more than it would the compilers of the 
work. 

At this moment the sound of footsteps ascending 
our stairs became audible. It was late for business 
callers, but we were not unaccustomed to late visitors; 


THE BLUE SCARAB 


106 

and a familiar rat-tat of our little brass knocker 
seemed to explain the untimely visit. 

“That sounds like Superintendent Miller’s knock,” 
said Thorndyke, as he strode across the room to open 
the door. And the Superintendent it turned out to 
be. But not alone. 

As the door opened, the officer entered with two gen¬ 
tlemen, both natives of India, and one of whom was 
our friend Mr. Byramji. 

“Perhaps,” said Miller, “I had better look in a little 
later.” 

“Not on my account,” said Byramji. “I have only 
a few words to say and there is nothing secret about 
my business. May I introduce my kinsman, Mr. 
Khambata, a student of the Inner Temple?” 

Byramji’s companion bowed ceremoniously. “By¬ 
ramji came to my chambers just now,” he explained, 
“to consult me about this dreadful affair, and he 
chanced to show me your card. He had not heard 
of you, but supposed you to be an ordinary medical 
practitioner. He did not realize that he had enter¬ 
tained an angel unawares. But I, who knew of your 
great reputation, advised him to put his affairs in your 
hands—without prejudice to the official investiga¬ 
tions,” Mr. Khambata added hastily, bowing to the 
Superintendent. 

“And I,” said Mr. Byramji, “instantly decided to 
act on my kinsman’s advice. I have come to beg you 
to leave no stone unturned to secure the punishment 
of my cousin’s murderer. Spare no expense. I am 


io7 


THE NEW JERSEY SPHINX 

a rich man and my poor cousin’s property will come 
to me. As to the ruby, recover it if you can, but it 
is of no consequence. Vengeance—justice is what I 
seek. Deliver this wretch into my hands, or into the 
hands of justice, and I give you the ruby or its value, 
freely—gladly.” 

“There is no need,” said Thorndyke, “of such ex¬ 
traordinary inducement. If you wish me to investi¬ 
gate this case, I will do so and will use every means 
at my disposal, without prejudice, as your friend 
says, to the proper claims of the officers of the law. 
But you understand that I can make no promises. I 
cannot guarantee success.” 

“We understand that,” said Mr. Khambata. “But 
we know that if you undertake the case, everything 
that is possible will be done. And now we must leave 
you to your consultation.” 

As soon as our clients had gone, Miller rose from 
his chair with his hand in his breast pocket. “I dare 
say, doctor,” said he, “you can guess what I have 
come about. I was sent for to look into this Byramji 
case, and I heard from Mr. Byramji that you had been 
there and that you had made a minute examination 
of the missing man’s hat. So have I; and I don’t 
mind telling you that I could learn nothing from it.” 

“I haven’t learnt much myself,” said Thorndyke. 

“But you’ve picked up something,” urged Miller, 
“if it is only a hint; and we have just a little clue. 
There is very small doubt that this is the same man 
—‘The New Jersey Sphinx,’ as the papers call him— 


108 THE BLUE SCARAB 

that committed those other robberies; and a very 
difficult type of criminal he is to get hold of. He is 
bold, he is wary, he plays a lone hand, and he sticks 
at nothing. He has no confederates, and he kills 
every time. The American police never got near him 
but once; and that once gives us the only clues we 
have.” 

“Finger-prints?” inquired Thorndyke. 

“Yes, and very poor ones, too. So rough that you 
can hardly make out the pattern. And even those 
are not absolutely guaranteed to be his; but in any 
case, finger-prints are not much use until you’ve got 
the man. And there is a photograph of the fellow 
himself. But it is only a snapshot, and a poor one 
at that. All it shows is that he has a mop of hair and 
a pointed beard—or at least he had when the photo¬ 
graph was taken. But for identification purposes it 
is practically worthless. Still, there it is; and what 
I propose is this: we want this man and so do you; 
we’ve worked together before and can trust one an¬ 
other. I am going to lay my cards on the table and 
ask you to do the same.” 

“But, my dear Miller,” said Thorndyke, “I haven’t 
any cards. I haven’t a single solid fact.” 

The detective was visibly disappointed. Neverthe¬ 
less, he laid two photographs on the table and pushed 
them towards Thorndyke, who inspected them through 
his lens and passed them to me. 

“The pattern is very indistinct and broken up,” he 
remarked. 


THE NEW JERSEY SPHINX 109 

“Yes,” said Miller; “the prints must have been 
made on a very rough surface, though you get prints 
something like those from fitters or other men who 
use files and handle rough metal. And now, doctor, 
can’t you give us a lead of any kind?” 

Thorndyke reflected a few moments. “I really 
have not a single real fact,” said he, “and I am un¬ 
willing to make merely speculative suggestions.” 

“Oh, that’s all right,” Miller replied cheerfully. 
“Give us a start. I shan’t complain if it comes to 
nothing.” 

“Well,” Thorndyke said reluctantly, “I was think¬ 
ing of getting a few particulars as to the various 
tenants of No. 51, Clifford’s Inn. Perhaps you could 
do it more easily and it might be worth your 
while.” 

“Good!” Miller exclaimed gleefully. “He ‘gives to 
airy nothing a local habitation and a name.’ ” 

“It is probably the wrong name,” Thorndyke re¬ 
minded him. 

“I don’t care,” said Miller. “But why shouldn’t 
we go together? It’s too late to-night, and I can’t 
manage to-morrow morning. But say to-morrow after¬ 
noon. Two heads are better than one, you know, 
especially when the second one is yours. Or per¬ 
haps,” he added, with a glance at me, “three would 
be better still.” 

Thorndyke considered for a moment or two and 
then looked at me. 

“What do you say, Jervis?” he asked. 


no 


THE BLUE SCARAB 


As my afternoon was unoccupied, I agreed with 
enthusiasm, being as curious as the Superintendent to 
know how Thorndyke had connected this particular 
locality with the vanished criminal; and Miller de¬ 
parted in high spirits with an appointment for the 
morrow at three o’clock in the afternoon. 

For some time after the Superintendent’s departure 
I sat wrapped in profound meditation. In some mys¬ 
terious way the address, 51, Clifford’s Inn, had 
emerged from the formless data yielded by the dere¬ 
lict hat. But what had been the connection? Appar¬ 
ently the fragment of the addressed envelope had 
furnished the clue. But how had Thorndyke extended 

“-n” into “51, Clifford’s Inn”? It was to me a 

complete mystery. 

Meanwhile, Thorndyke had seated himself at the 
writing table, and I noticed that of the two letters 
which he wrote, one was written on our headed paper 
and the other on ordinary plain notepaper. I was 
speculating on the reason for this when he rose, and 
as he stuck on the stamps, said to me, “I am just 
going out to post these two letters. Do you care for 
a short stroll through the leafy shades of Fleet 
Street? The evening is still young.” 

“The rural solitudes of Fleet Street attract me at 
all hours,” I replied, fetching my hat from the ad¬ 
joining office; and we accordingly sallied forth to¬ 
gether, strolling up King’s Bench Walk and emerging 
into Fleet Street by way of Mitre Court. When 
Thorndyke had dropped his letters into the post office 



THE NEW JERSEY SPHINX hi 

box he stood awhile gazing up at the tower of St. 
Dunstan’s Church. 

“Have you ever been in Clifford’s Inn, Jervis?” he 
inquired. 

“Never,” I replied (we passed through it together 
on an average a dozen times a week), “but it is not 
too late for an exploratory visit.” 

We crossed the road, and entering Clifford’s Inn 
Passage, passed through the still half-open gate, 
crossed the outer court and threaded the tunnel-like 
entry by the hall to the inner court, near the middle 
of which Thorndyke halted, and looking up at one 
of the ancient houses, remarked, “No. 51.” 

“So that is where our friend hangs out his flag,” 
said I. 

“Oh, come, Jervis,” he protested, “I am surprised 
at you; you are as bad as Miller. I have merely sug¬ 
gested a possible connection between these premises 
and the hat that was left at Bedford Place. As to 
the nature of that connection I have no idea, and 
there may be no connection at all. I assure you, 
Jervis, that I am on the thinnest possible ice. I am 
working on a hypothesis which is in the highest degree 
speculative, and I should not have given Miller a hint, 
but that he was so eager and so willing to help and 
also that I wanted his finger-prints. But we are really 
only at the beginning, and may never get any farther.” 

I looked up at the old house. It was all in dark¬ 
ness excepting the top floor, where a couple of lighted 
windows showed the shadow of a man moving rap- 


112 


THE BLUE SCARAB 


idly about the room. We crossed to the entry and 
inspected the names painted on the door-posts. The 
ground floor was occupied by a firm of photo¬ 
engravers, the first floor by a Mr. Carrington, whose 
name stood out conspicuously on its oblong of com¬ 
paratively fresh white paint, while the tenants of the 
second floor—old residents, to judge by the faded 
and discoloured paint in which their names were an¬ 
nounced—were Messrs. Burt & Highley, metallur¬ 
gists. 

“Burt has departed,” said Thorndyke, as I read 
out the names; and he pointed to two red lines of 
erasure which I had not noticed in the dim light, “so 
the active gentleman above is presumably Mr. High¬ 
ley, and we may take it that he has residential as well 
as business premises. I wonder who and what Mr. 
Carrington is—but I dare say we shall find out to¬ 
morrow.” 

With this he dismissed the professional aspects of 
Clifford’s Inn, and changing the subject to its history 
and associations, chatted in his inimitable, picturesque 
manner until our leisurely perambulations brought us 
at length to the Inner Temple Gate. 

On the following morning we bustled through our 
work in order to leave the afternoon free, making 
several joint visits to solicitors from whom we were 
taking instructions. Returning from the last of these 
—a City lawyer—Thorndyke turned into St. Helen’s 
Place and halted at a doorway bearing the brass plate 
of a firm of assayists and refiners. I followed him 


THE NEW JERSEY SPHINX 113 

into the outer office where, on his mentioning his 
name, an elderly man came to the counter. 

“Mr. Grayson has put out some specimens for 
you, sir,” said he. “They are about thirty grains to 
the ton—you said that the content was of no impor¬ 
tance—and I am to tell you that you need not return 
them. They are not worth treating.” He went to a 
large safe from which he took a canvas bag, and re¬ 
turning to the counter, turned out on it the contents 
of the bag, consisting of about a dozen good-sized 
lumps of quartz and a glittering yellow fragment, 
which Thorndyke picked out and dropped in his 
pocket. 

“Will that collection do?” our friend inquired. 

“It will answer my purpose perfectly,” Thorndyke 
replied, and when the specimens had been replaced in 
the bag, and the latter deposited in Thorndyke’s hand¬ 
bag, my colleague thanked the assistant and we went 
on our way. 

“We extend our activities into the domain of min¬ 
eralogy,” I remarked. 

Thorndyke smiled an inscrutable smile. “We also 
employ the suction pump as an instrument of re¬ 
search,” he observed. “However, the strategic uses 
of chunks of quartz—otherwise than as missiles— 
will develop themselves in due course, and the interval 
may be used for reflection.” 

It was. But my reflections brought no solution. 
I noticed, however, that when at three o’clock we set 
forth in company with the Superintendent, the bag 


THE BLUE SCARAB 


114 

went with us; and having offered to carry it and hav¬ 
ing had my offer accepted with a sly twinkle, its 
weight assured me that the quartz was still inside e 

“Chambers and Offices to let,” Thorndyke read 
aloud as we approached the porter’s lodge. “That 
lets us in, I think. And the porter knows Dr. Jervis 
and me by sight, so he will talk more freely.” 

“He doesn’t know me,” said the Superintendent, 
“but I’ll keep in the background, all the same.” 

A pull at the bell brought out a clerical-looking man 
in a tall hat and a frock coat, who regarded Thorn- 
dyke and me through his spectacles with an amiable 
air of recognition. 

“Good afternoon, Mr. Larkin,” said Thorndyke. 
“I am asked to get particulars of vacant chambers. 
What have you got to let?” 

Mr. Larkin reflected. “Let me see. There’s a 
ground floor at No. 5—rather dark—and a small 
second-pair set at No. 12. And then there is—oh, 
yes, there is a good first floor set at No. 51. They 
wouldn’t have been vacant until Michaelmas, but Mr. 
Carrington, the tenant, has had to go abroad suddenly. 
I had a letter from him this morning, enclosing the 
key. Funny letter, too.” He dived into his pocket, 
and hauling out a bundle of letters, selected one and 
handed it to Thorndyke with a broad smile. 

Thorndyke glanced at the postmark (“London, 
E.”), and having taken out the key, extracted the 
letter, which he opened and held so that Miller and 
I could see it. The paper bore the printed heading, 


THE NEW JERSEY SPHINX 115 

“Baltic Shipping Company, Wapping,” and the fur¬ 
ther written heading, “S.S. Gothenburg” and the let¬ 
ter was brief and to the point: 

Dear Sir, 

I am giving up my chambers at No. 51, as I have 
been suddenly called abroad. I enclose the key, but 
am not troubling you with the rent. The sale of my 
costly furniture will more than cover it, and the sur¬ 
plus can be expended on painting the garden railings. 

Yours sincerely, 

A. Carrington. 

Thorndyke smilingly replaced the letter and the key 
in the envelope and asked: 

“What is the furniture like?” 

“You’ll see,” chuckled the porter, “if you care to 
look at the rooms. And I think they might suit. 
They’re a good set.” 

“Quiet?” 

“Yes, pretty quiet. There’s a metallurgist overhead 
—Highley—used to be Burt & Highley, but Burt has 
gone to the City, and I don’t think Highley does much 
business now.” 

“Let me see,” said Thorndyke, “I think I used to 
meet Highley sometimes—a tall, dark man, isn’t he?” 

“No, that would be Burt. Highley is a little, 
fairish man, rather bald, with a pretty rich com¬ 
plexion”—here Mr. Larkin tapped his nose knowingly 
and raised his little finger—“which may account for 
the falling off of business.” 


n6 


THE BLUE SCARAB 


“Hadn’t we better have a look at the rooms?” 
Miller interrupted a little impatiently. 

“Can we see them, Mr. Larkin?” asked Thorndyke. 

“Certainly,” was the reply. “You’ve got the key. 
Let me have it when you’ve seen the rooms; and what¬ 
ever you do,” he added with a broad grin, “be careful 
of the furniture.” 

“It looks,” the Superintendent remarked as we 
crossed the inner court, “as if Mr. Carrington had 
done a mizzle. That’s hopeful. And I see,” he con¬ 
tinued, glancing at the fresh paint on the door-post 
as we passed through the entry, “that he hasn’t been 
here long. That’s hopeful, too.” 

We ascended to the first floor, and as Thorndyke 
unlocked and threw open the door, Miller laughed 
aloud. The “costly furniture” consisted of a small 
kitchen table, a Windsor chair and a dilapidated deck¬ 
chair. The kitchen contained a gas ring, a small 
saucepan and a frying-pan, and the bedroom was fur¬ 
nished with a camp-bed devoid of bed-clothes, a wash- 
hand basin on a packing case, and a water can. 

“Hallo!” exclaimed the Superintendent. “He’s 
left a hat behind. Quite a good hat, too.” He took 
it down from the peg, glanced at its exterior and then, 
turning it over, looked inside. And then his mouth 
opened with a jerk. 

“Great Solomon Eagle!” he gasped. “Do you see, 
doctor? It’s the hat.” 

He held it out to us, and sure enough on the white 
silk lining of the crown were the embossed, gilt let- 


THE NEW JERSEY SPHINX 117 

ters, D.B., just as Mr. Byramji had described 
them. 

“Yes,” Thorndyke agreed, as the Superintendent 
snatched up a greengrocer’s paper bag from the 
kitchen floor and persuaded the hat into it, “it is un¬ 
doubtedly the missing link. But what are you going 
to do now?” 

“Do!” exclaimed Miller. “Why, I am going to col¬ 
lar the man. These Baltic boats put in at Hull and 
Newcastle—perhaps he didn’t know that—and they 
are pretty slow boats, too. I shall wire to Newcastle 
to have the ship detained and take Inspector Badger 
down to make the arrest. I’ll leave you to explain 
to the porter, and I owe you a thousand thanks for 
your valuable tip.” 

With this he bustled away, clasping the precious 
hat, and from the window we saw him hurry across 
the court and dart out through the postern into Fetter 
Lane. 

“I think Miller was rather precipitate,” said Thorn- 
dyke. “He should have got a description of the man 
and some further particulars.” 

“Yes,” said I. “Miller had much better have 
waited until you had finished with Mr. Larkin. But 
you can get some more particulars when we take back 
the key.” 

“We shall get more information from the gentle¬ 
man who lives on the floor above, and I think we will 
go up and interview him now. I wrote to him last 
night and made a metallurgical appointment, signing 


ii8 THE BLUE SCARAB 

myself W. Polton. Your name, if he should ask, is 
Stevenson.” 

As we ascended the stairs to the next floor, I medi¬ 
tated on the rather tortuous proceedings of my usually 
straightforward colleague. The use of the lumps of 
quartz was now obvious; but why these mysterious 
tactics? And why, before knocking at the door, did 
Thorndyke carefully take the reading of the gas meter 
on the landing? 

The door was opened in response to our knock by a 
shortish, alert-looking, clean-shaved man in a white 
overall, who looked at us keenly and rather forbid¬ 
dingly. But Thorndyke was geniality personified. 

“How do you do, Mr. Highley?” said he, holding 
out his hand, which the metallurgist shook coolly. 
“You got my letter, I suppose?” 

“Yes. But I am not Mr. Highley. He’s away and 
I am carrying on. I think of taking over his busi¬ 
ness, if there is any to take over. My name is Sher¬ 
wood. Have you got the samples?” 

Thorndyke produced the canvas bag, which Mr. 
Sherwood took from him and emptied out on a bench, 
picking up the lumps of quartz one by one and 
examining them closely. Meanwhile Thorndyke took 
a rapid survey of the premises. Against the wall 
were two cupel furnaces and a third larger furnace 
like a small pottery kiln. On a set of narrow shelves 
were several rows of bone-ash cupels, looking like 
little white flower-pots, and near them was the cupel- 
press—an appliance into which powdered bone-ash 


THE NEW JERSEY SPHINX 119 

was fed and compressed by a plunger to form the 
CU pels—while by the side of the press was a tub of 
bone-ash—a good deal coarser, I noticed, than the 
usual fine powder. This coarseness was also observed 
by Thorndyke, who edged up to the tub and dipped 
his hand into the ash and then wiped his fingers on 
his handkerchief. 

“This stuff doesn’t seem to contain much gold,” said 
Mr. Sherwood. “But we shall see when we make the 
assay.” 

“What do you think of this?” asked Thorndyke, 
taking from his pocket the small lump of glittering, 
golden-looking mineral that he had picked out at the 
assayist’s. Mr. Sherwood took it from him and exam¬ 
ined it closely. “This looks more hopeful,” said he; 
“rather rich, in fact.” 

Thorndyke received this statement with an un¬ 
moved countenance; but as for me, I stared at Mr. 
Sherwood in amazement. For this lump of glittering 
mineral was simply a fragment of common iron 
pyrites! It would not have deceived a schoolboy, 
much less a metallurgist. 

Still holding the specimen, and taking a watch¬ 
maker’s lens from a shelf, Mr. Sherwood moved over 
to the window. Simultaneously, Thorndyke stepped 
softly to the cupel shelves and quickly ran his eye 
along the rows of cupels. Presently he paused at one, 
examined it more closely, and then, taking it from the 
shelf, began to pick at it with his finger-nail. 

At this moment Mr. Sherwood turned and observed 


120 


THE BLUE SCARAB 


him; and instantly there flashed into the metallurgist’s 
face an expression of mingled anger and alarm. 

“Put that down!” he commanded peremptorily, 
and then, as Thorndyke continued to scrape with his 
finger-nail, he shouted furiously, “Do you hear? 
Drop it!” 

Thorndyke took him literally at his word and let 
the cupel fall on the floor, when it shattered into 
innumerable fragments, of which one of the largest 
separated itself from the rest. Thorndyke pounced 
upon it and in an instantaneous glance as he picked 
it up, I recognized it as a calcined tooth. 

Then followed a few moments of weird, dramatic 
silence. Thorndyke, holding the tooth between his 
finger and thumb, looked steadily into the eyes of 
the metallurgist; and the latter, pallid as a corpse, 
glared at Thorndyke and furtively unbuttoned his 
overall. 

Suddenly the silence broke into a tumult as bewil¬ 
dering as the crash of a railway collision. Sherwood’s 
right hand darted under his overall. Instantly, Thorn¬ 
dyke snatched up another cupel and hurled it with 
such truth of aim that it shattered on the metal¬ 
lurgist’s forehead. And as he flung the missile, he 
sprang forward, and delivered a swift upper-cut. 
There was a thunderous crash, a cloud of white dust, 
and an automatic pistol clattered along the floor. 

I snatched up the pistol and rushed to my friend’s 
assistance. But there was no need. With his great 
strength and his uncanny skill—to say nothing of the 


12 I 


THE NEW JERSEY SPHINX 

effects of the knock-out blow—Thorndyke had the 
man pinned down immovably. 

“See if you can find some cord, Jervis,” he said in 
a calm, quiet tone that seemed almost ridiculously 
out of character with the circumstances. 

There was no difficulty about this, for several 
corded boxes stood in a corner of the laboratory. I 
cut off two lengths, with one of which I secured the 
prostrate man’s arms and with the other fastened his 
knees and ankles. 

“Now,” said Thorndyke, “if you will take charge 
of his hands, we will make a preliminary inspection. 
Let us first see if he wears a belt.” 

Unbuttoning the man’s waistcoat, he drew up the 
shirt, disclosing a broad, webbing belt furnished with 
several leather pockets, the buttoned flaps of which 
he felt carefully, regardless of the stream of threats 
and imprecations that poured from our victim’s swol¬ 
len lips. From the front pockets he proceeded to the 
back, passing an exploratory hand under the writhing 
body. 

“Ah!” he exclaimed suddenly, “just turn him over, 
and look out for his heels.” 

We rolled our captive over, and as Thorndyke 
“skinned the rabbit,” a central pocket came into view,, 
into which, when he had unbuttoned it, he inserted 
his fingers. “Yes,” he continued, “I think this is 
what we are looking for.” He withdrew his fingers, 
between which he held a small packet of Japanese 
paper, and with feverish excitement I watched him 


122 


THE BLUE SCARAB 


open out layer after layer of the soft wrapping. As 
he turned back the last fold a wonderful crimson 
sparkle told me that the “great ruby” was found. 

“There, Jervis,” said Thorndyke, holding the mag¬ 
nificent gem towards me in the palm of his hand, 
“look on this beautiful, sinister thing, charged with 
untold potentialities of evil—and thank the gods that 
it is not yours.” 

He wrapped it up again carefully and, having be¬ 
stowed it in an inner pocket, said, “And now give me 
the pistol and run down to the telegraph office and 
see if you can stop Miller. I should like him to have 
the credit for this.” 

I handed him the pistol and made my way out into 
Fetter Lane and so down to Fleet Street, where at 
the post office my urgent message was sent off to 
Scotland Yard immediately. In a few minutes the 
reply came that Superintendent Miller had not yet 
left and that he was starting immediately for Clifford’s 
Inn. A quarter of an hour later he drove up in a 
hansom to the Fetter Lane gate and I conducted him 
up to the second floor, where Thorndyke introduced 
him to his prisoner and witnessed the official arrest. 

“You don’t see how I arrived at it,” said Thorn- 
dyke as we walked homeward after returning the 
key. “Well, I am not surprised. The initial evidence 
was of the weakest; it acquired significance only by 
cumulative effect. Let us reconstruct it as it devel¬ 
oped. 


THE NEW JERSEY SPHINX 123 

“The derelict hat was, of course, the starting point. 
Now the first thing one noticed was that it appeared 
to have had more than one owner. No man would 
buy a new hat that fitted so badly as to need all that 
packing; and the arrangement of the packing sug¬ 
gested a long-headed man wearing a hat that had 
belonged to a man with a short head. Then there 
were the suggestions offered by the slips of paper. 
The fragmentary address referred to a place the name 
of which ended in 'n’ and the remainder was evidently 
'London, W.C.’ Now what West Central place names 
end in 'n.’ It was not a street, a square or a court, 
and Barbican is not in the W.C. district. It was al¬ 
most certainly one of the half-dozen surviving Inns 
of Court or Chancery. But, of course, it was not 
necessarily the address of the owner of the hat. 

“The other slip of paper bore the end of a word 
ending in 'el/ and another word ending in “eep,’ and 
connected with these were quantities stated in ounces 
and pennyweights troy weight. But the only persons 
who use troy weight are those who deal in precious 
metals. I inferred therefore that the 'el’ was part of 
'lemel,’ and that the 'eep’ was part of 'floor-sweep/ 
an inference that was supported by the respective 
quantities, three ounces five pennyweights of lemel 
and nine and a half ounces of floor-sweep.” 

“What is lemel?” I asked. 

“It is the trade name for the gold or silver filings 
that collect in the 'skin’ of a jeweller’s bench. Floor- 
sweep is, of course, the dust swept up on the floor of 


124 


THE BLUE SCARAB 


a jeweller’s or goldsmith’s workshop. The lemel is 
actual metal, though not of uniform fineness, but the 
‘sweep’ is a mixture of dirt and metal. Both are saved 
and sent to the refiners to have the gold and silver 
extracted. 

“This paper, then, was connected either with a gold¬ 
smith or a gold refiner—who might call himself an 
assayist or a metallurgist. The connection was sup¬ 
ported by the leaf of a price list of gas stoves. A 
metallurgist would be kept well supplied with lists of 
gas stoves and furnaces. The traces of lead in the 
dust from the hat gave us another straw blowing in 
the same direction, for gold assayed by the dry process 
is fused in the cupel furnace with lead; and as the 
lead oxidizes and the oxide is volatile, traces of lead 
would tend to appear in the dust deposited in the 
laboratory. 

“The next thing to do was to consult the directory; 
and when I did so, I found that there were no gold¬ 
smiths in any of the Inns and only one assayist— 
Mr. Highley, of Clifford’s Inn. The probabilities, 
therefore, slender as they were, pointed to some con¬ 
nection between this stray hat and Mr. Highley. And 
this was positively all the information that we had 
when we came out this afternoon. 

“As soon as we got to Clifford’s Inn, however, the 
evidence began to grow like a rolling snowball. First 
there was Larkin’s contribution; and then there was 
the discovery of the missing hat. Now, as soon as I 
saw that hat my suspicions fell upon the man upstairs. 


THE NEW JERSEY SPHINX 125 

I felt a conviction that the hat had been left there 
purposely and that the letter to Larkin was just a red 
herring to create a false trail. Nevertheless, the pres¬ 
ence of that hat completely confirmed the other evi¬ 
dence. It showed that the apparent connection was 
a real connection.” 

“But,” I asked, “what made you suspect the man 
upstairs?” 

“My dear Jervis!” he exclaimed. “Consider the 
facts. That hat was enough to hang the man who 
left it there. Can you imagine this astute, wary vil¬ 
lain making such an idiot’s mistake—going away and 
leaving the means of his conviction for any one to 
find? But you are forgetting that whereas the miss¬ 
ing hat was found on the first floor, the murderer’s 
hat was connected with the second floor. The evi¬ 
dence suggested that it was Highley’s hat. And now, 
before we go on to the next stage, let me remind you 
of those finger-prints. Miller thought that their 
rough appearance was due to the surface on which 
they had been made. But it was not. They were the 
prints of a person who was suffering from ichthyosis, 
palmar psoriasis or some dry dermatitis. 

“There is one other point. The man we were look¬ 
ing for was a murderer. His life was already forfeit. 
To such a man another murder more or less is of no 
consequence. If this man, having laid the false trail, 
had determined to take sanctuary in Highley’s rooms, 
it was probable that he had already got rid of Highley. 
And remember that a metallurgist has unrivalled 


126 


THE BLUE SCARAB 


means of disposing of a body; for not only is each 
of his muffle furnaces a miniature crematorium, but 
the very residue of a cremated body—bone-ash—is 
one of the materials of his trade. 

“When we went upstairs, I first took the reading 
of the gas meter and ascertained that a large amount 
of gas had been used recently. Then, when we 
entered I took the opportunity to shake hands with 
Mr. Sherwood, and immediately I became aware that 
he suffered from a rather extreme form of ichthyosis. 
That was the first point of verification. Then we dis¬ 
covered that he actually could not distinguish between 
iron pyrites and auriferous quartz. He was not a 
metallurgist at all. He was a masquerader. Then 
the bone-ash in the tub was mixed with fragments of 
calcined bone, and the cupels all showed similar frag¬ 
ments. In one of them I could see part of the crown 
of a tooth. That was pure luck. But observe that 
by that time I had enough evidence to justify an 
arrest. The tooth served only to bring the affair to a 
crisis; and his response to my unspoken accusation 
saved us the trouble of further search for confirma¬ 
tory evidence.” 

“What is not quite clear to me,” said I, “is when 
and why he made away with Highley. As the body 
has been completely reduced to bone-ash, Highley 
must have been dead at least some days.” 

“Undoubtedly,” Thorndyke agreed. “I take it that 
the course of events was somewhat like this: The po¬ 
lice have been searching eagerly for this man, and 


THE NEW JERSEY SPHINX 127 

every new crime must have made his position more 
unsafe—for a criminal can never be sure that he has 
not dropped some clue. It began to be necessary for 
him to make some arrangements for leaving the 
country and meanwhile to have a retreat in case his 
whereabouts should chance to be discovered. High- 
ley’s chambers were admirable for both purposes. 
Here was a solitary man who seldom had a visitor, 
and who would probably not be missed for some con¬ 
siderable time; and in those chambers were the means 
of rapidly and completely disposing of the body. The 
mere murder would be a negligible detail to this 
ruffian. 

“I imagine that Highley was done to death at least 
a week ago, and that the murderer did not take up 
his new tenancy until the body was reduced to ash. 
With that large furnace in addition to the small ones, 
this would not take long. When the new premises 
were ready, he could make a sham disappearance to 
cover his actual flight later; and you must see how 
perfectly misleading that sham disappearance was. 
If the police had discovered that hat in the empty 
room only a week later, they would have been certain 
that he had escaped to one of the Baltic ports; and 
while they were following his supposed tracks, he 
could have gone off comfortably via Folkestone or 
Southampton.” 

“Then you think he had only just moved into 
Highley’s rooms?” 

“I should say he moved in last night. The murder 


128 


THE BLUE SCARAB 


of Byramji was probably planned on some informa¬ 
tion that the murderer had picked up, and as soon 
as it was accomplished he began forthwith to lay 
down the false tracks. When he reached his rooms 
yesterday afternoon, he must have written the letter 
to Larkin and gone off at once to the East End to 
post it. Then he probably had his bushy hair cut 
short and shaved off his beard and moustache—which 
would render him quite unrecognizable by Larkin— 
and moved into Highley’s chambers, from which he 
would have quietly sallied forth in a few days’ time 
to take his passage to the Continent. It was quite a 
good plan and but for the accident of taking the wrong 
hat, would almost certainly have succeeded.” 

Once every year, on the second of August, there is 
delivered with unfailing regularity at No. 5A, King’s 
Bench Walk, a large box of carved sandal-wood filled 
with the choicest Trichinopoly cheroots and accom¬ 
panied by an affectionate letter from our late client, 
Mr. Byramji. For the second of August is the anni¬ 
versary of the death (in the execution shed at New¬ 
gate) of Cornelius Barnett, otherwise known as the 
“New Jersey Sphinx.” 


IV 

THE TOUCHSTONE 


I T happened not uncommonly that the exigencies 
of practice committed my friend Thorndyke to 
investigations that lay more properly within the 
province of the police. For problems that had arisen 
as secondary consequences of a criminal act could 
usually not be solved until the circumstances of that 
act were fully elucidated, and, incidentally, the iden¬ 
tity of the actor established. Such a problem was that 
of the disappearance of James Harewood’s will, a 
problem that was propounded to us by our old friend, 
Mr. Marchmont, when he called on us, by appoint¬ 
ment, with the client of whom he had spoken in his 
note. 

It was just four o’clock when the solicitor arrived 
at our chambers, and as I admitted him he ushered 
in a gentlemanly-looking man of about thirty-five, 
whom he introduced as Mr. William Crowhurst. 

“I will just stay,” said he, with an approving glance 
at the tea-service on the table, “and have a cup of tea 
with you, and give you an outline of the case. Then 
I must run away and leave Mr. Crowhurst to fill in 
the details.” 

He seated himself in an easy chair within com¬ 
fortable reach of the table, and as Thorndyke poured 
129 


THE BLUE SCARAB 


130 

out the tea, he glanced over a few notes scribbled on 
a sheet of paper. 

“I may say,” he began, stirring his tea thought¬ 
fully, “that this is a forlorn hope. I have brought 
the case to you, but I have not the slightest expecta¬ 
tion that you will be able to help us.” 

“A very wholesome frame of mind,” Thorndyke 
commented with a smile. “I hope it is that of your 
client also.” 

“It is indeed,” said Mr. Crowhurst; “in fact, it 
seems to me a waste of your time to go into the mat¬ 
ter. Probably you will think so too, when you have 
heard the particulars.” 

“Well, let us hear the particulars,” said Thorndyke. 
“A forlorn hope has, at least, the stimulating quality 
of difficulty. Let us have your outline sketch, March- 
mont.” 

The solicitor, having emptied his cup and pushed 
it towards the tray for replenishment, glanced at his 
notes and began: 

“The simplest way in which to present the problem 
is to give a brief recital of the events that have given 
rise to it, which are these: The day before yesterday 
—that is last Monday—at a quarter to two in the 
afternoon, Mr. James Harewood executed a will at his 
house at Merbridge, which is about two miles from 
Welsbury. There were present four persons: two 
of his servants, who signed as witnesses, and the 
two principal beneficiaries—Mr. Arthur Baxfield, a 
nephew of the testator, and our friend here, Mr. Wil- 


THE TOUCHSTONE 131 

liam Crowhurst. The will was a holograph written 
on the two pages of a sheet of letter-paper. When 
the witnesses signed, the will was covered by another 
sheet of paper so that only the space for the signa¬ 
tures was exposed. Neither of the witnesses read the 
will, nor did either of the beneficiaries; and so far as 
I am aware, no one but the testator knew what were 
its actual provisions, though, after the servants had 
left the room, Mr. Harewood explained its general 
purport to the beneficiaries.” 

“And what was its general purport?” Thorndyke 
asked. 

“Broadly speaking,” replied Marchmont, “it divided 
the estate in two very unequal portions between Mr. 
Baxfield and Mr. Crowhurst. There were certain 
small legacies of which neither the amounts nor the 
names of the legatees are known. Then, to Baxfield 
was given a thousand pounds to enable him either to 
buy a partnership or to start a small factory—he is 
a felt hat manufacturer by trade—and the remainder 
to Crowhurst, who was made executor and residuary 
legatee. But, of course, the residue of the estate is 
an unknown quantity, since we don’t know either the 
number or the amounts of the legacies. 

“Shortly after the signing of the will, the parties 
separated. Mr. Harewood folded up the will and put 
it in a leather wallet which he slipped into his pocket, 
stating his intention of taking the will forthwith to 
deposit with his lawyer at Welsbury. A few minutes 
after his guests had departed, he was seen by one of 


132 


THE BLUE SCARAB 


the servants to leave the house, and afterwards was 
seen by a neighbour walking along a footpath which, 
after passing through a small wood, joins the main 
road about a mile and a quarter from Welsbury. 
From that time, he was never again seen alive. He 
never visited the lawyer, nor did any one see him at 
or near Welsbury or elsewhere. 

“As he did not return home that night, his house¬ 
keeper (he was a widower and childless) became ex¬ 
tremely alarmed, and in the morning she communi¬ 
cated with the police. A search party was organized, 
and, following the path on which he was last seen, 
explored the wood—which is known locally as Gil¬ 
bert’s Copse—and here, at the bottom of an old chalk¬ 
pit, they found him lying dead with a fractured skull 
and a dislocated neck. How he came by these in¬ 
juries is not at present known; but as the body had 
been robbed of all valuables, including his watch, 
purse, diamond ring and the wallet containing the will, 
there is naturally a strong suspicion that he had been 
murdered. That, however, is not our immediate con¬ 
cern—at least not mine. I am concerned with the 
will, which, as you see, has disappeared, and as it has 
presumably been carried away by a thief who is under 
suspicion of murder, it is not likely to be returned.” 

“It is almost certainly destroyed by this time,” said 
Mr. Crowhurst. 

“That certainly seems probable,” Thorndyke 
agreed. “But what do you want me to do? L You 
haven’t come for counsel’s opinion?” 


THE TOUCHSTONE 


i33 


“No,” replied Marchmont. “I am pretty clear 
about the legal position. I shall claim, as the will 
has presumably been destroyed, to have the testator’s 
wishes carried out in so far as they are known. But 
I am doubtful as to the view the Court may take. 
It may decide that the testator’s wishes are not known; 
that the provisions of the will are too uncertain to 
admit of administration.” 

“And what would be the effect of that decision?” 
asked Thorndyke. 

“In that case,” said Marchmont, “the entire estate 
would go to Baxfield as he is the next of kin, and there 
was no previous will.” 

“And what is it that you want me to do?” 

Marchmont chuckled deprecatingly. “You have to 
pay the penalty of being a prodigy, Thorndyke. We 
are asking you to do an impossibility—but we don’t 
really expect you to bring it off. We ask you to help 
us to recover the will.” 

“If the will has been completely destroyed, it can’t 
be recovered,” said Thorndyke. “But we don’t know 
that it has been destroyed. The matter is, at least, 
worth investigating; and if you wish me to look into 
it, I will.” 

The solicitor rose with an air of evident relief. 
“Thank you, Thorndyke,” said he. “I expect nothing 
—at least, I tell myself that I do—but I can now feel 
that everything that is possible will be done. And 
now I must be off. Crowhurst can give you any de¬ 
tails that you want.” 


THE BLUE SCARAB 


134 

When Marchmont had gone, Thorndyke turned to 
our client and asked, “What do you suppose Baxfield 
will do, if the will is irretrievably lost? Will he press 
his claim as next of kin?” 

“I should say yes,” replied Crowhurst. “He is a 
business man and his natural claims are greater than 
mine. He is not likely to refuse what the law assigns 
to him as his right. As a matter of fact, I think he 
felt that his uncle had treated him unfairly in alienat¬ 
ing the property.” 

“Was there any reason for this diversion of the 
estate?” 

“Well,” replied Crowhurst, “Harewood and I had 
been very good friends and he was under some obli¬ 
gations to me; and then Baxfield had not made him¬ 
self very acceptable to his uncle. But the principal 
factor, I think, was a strong tendency of Baxfield’s to 
gamble. He had lost quite a lot of money by backing 
horses, and a careful, thrifty man like James Hare- 
wood doesn’t care to leave his savings to a gambler. 
The thousand pounds that he did leave to Baxfield 
was expressly for the purpose of investment in a busi¬ 
ness.” 

“Is Baxfield in business now?” 

“Not on his own account. He is a sort of foreman 
or shop-manager in a factory just outside Welsbury, 
and I believe he is a good worker and knows his trade 
thoroughly.” 

“And now,” said Thorndyke, “with regard to Mr. 
Harewood’s death. The injuries might, apparently, 


THE TOUCHSTONE 


135 


have been either accidental or homicidal. What are 
the probabilities of accident—disregarding the rob¬ 
bery?” 

“Very considerable, I should say. It is a most dan¬ 
gerous place. The footpath runs close beside the edge 
of a disused chalk-pit with perpendicular or overhang¬ 
ing sides, and the edge is masked by bushes and bram¬ 
bles. A careless walker might easily fall over—or be 
pushed over, for that matter.” 

“Do you know when the inquest is to take place?” 

“Yes. The day after to-morrow. I had the 
subpoena this morning for Friday afternoon at 2.30, 
at the Welsbury Town Hall.” 

At this moment footsteps were heard hurriedly 
ascending the stairs and then came a loud and per¬ 
emptory rat-tat at our door. I sprang across to see 
who our visitor was, and as I flung open the door, Mr. 
Marchmont rushed in, breathing heavily and flourish¬ 
ing a newspaper. 

“Here is a new development,” he exclaimed. “It 
doesn’t seem to help us much, but I thought you had 
better know about it at once.” He sat down, and 
putting on his spectacles, read aloud as follows: “A 
new and curious light has been thrown on the mys¬ 
tery of the death of Mr. James Harewood, whose 
body was found yesterday in a disused chalk-pit near 
Merbridge. It appears that on Monday—the day on 
which Mr. Harewood almost certainly was killed—a 
passenger alighting from a train at Barwood Junc¬ 
tion before it had stopped, slipped and fell between 


THE BLUE SCARAB 


136 

the train and the platform. He was quickly extri¬ 
cated, and as he had evidently sustained internal in¬ 
juries, he was taken to the local hospital, where he 
was found to be suffering from a fractured pelvis* 
He gave his name as Thomas Fletcher, but refused 
to give any address, saying that he had no relatives. 
This morning he died, and on his clothes being 
searched for an address, a parcel, formed of two 
handkerchiefs tied up with string, was found in his 
pocket. When it was opened it was found to contain 
five watches, three watch-chains, a tie-pin and a num¬ 
ber of bank-notes. Other pockets contained a quan¬ 
tity of loose money—gold and silver mixed—and a 
card of the Welsbury Races, which were held on Mon¬ 
day. Of the five watches, one has been identified as 
the one taken from Mr. Harewood; and the bank¬ 
notes have been identified as a batch handed to him 
by the cashier of his bank at Welsbury last Thurs¬ 
day and presumably carried in the leather wallet 
which was stolen from his pocket. This wallet, by 
the way, has also been found. It was picked up— 
empty—last night on the railway embankment just 
outside Welsbury Station. Appearances thus suggest 
that the man, Fletcher, when on his way to the races, 
encountered Mr. Harewood in the lonely copse, and 
murdered and robbed him; or perhaps found him 
dead in the chalk-pit and robbed the body—a ques¬ 
tion that is now never likely to be solved.” 

As Marchmont finished reading, he looked up at 
Thorndyke. “It doesn’t help us much, does it?” said 


THE TOUCHSTONE 137 

he. “As the wallet was found empty, it is pretty cer¬ 
tain that the will has been destroyed.” 

“Or perhaps merely thrown away,” said Thorndyke. 
“In which case an advertisement offering a substantial 
reward may bring it to light.” 

The solicitor shrugged his shoulders sceptically, 
but agreed to publish the advertisement. Then, once 
more he turned to go; and as Mr. Crowhurst had no 
further information to give, he departed with his 
lawyer. 

For some time after they had gone, Thorndyke sat 
with his brief notes before him, silent and deeply 
reflective. I, too, maintained a discreet silence, for I 
knew from long experience that the motionless pose 
and quiet, impassive face were the outward signs of 
a mind in swift and strenuous action. Instinctively, 
I gathered that this apparently chaotic case was being 
quietly sorted out and arranged in a logical order; 
that Thorndyke, like a skilful chess-player, was “try¬ 
ing over the moves” before he should lay his hand 
upon the pieces. 

Presently he looked up. “Well?” he asked. “What 
do you think, Jervis? Is it worth while?” 

“That,” I replied, “depends on whether the will is 
or is not in existence. If it has been destroyed, an 
investigation would be a waste of our time and our 
client’s money.” 

“Yes,” he agreed. “But there is quite a good 
chance that it has not been destroyed. It was prob¬ 
ably dropped loose into the wallet, and then might 


THE BLUE SCARAB 


138 

have been picked out and thrown away before the 
wallet was examined. But we mustn’t concentrate 
too much on the will. If we take up the case—which 
I am inclined to do—we must ascertain the actual 
sequence of events. We have one clear day before 
the inquest. If we run down to Merbridge to-morrow 
and go thoroughly over the ground, and then go on 
to Bar wood and find out all that we can about the 
man Fletcher, we may get some new light from the 
evidence at the inquest.” 

I agreed readily to Thorndyke’s proposal, not that 
I could see any way into the case, but I felt a con¬ 
viction that my colleague had isolated some leading 
fact and had a definite line of research in his mind. 
And this conviction deepened when, later in the eve¬ 
ning, he laid his research case on the table and re¬ 
arranged its contents with evident purpose. I watched 
curiously the apparatus that he was packing in it and 
tried—not very successfully—to infer the nature of 
the proposed investigation. The box of powdered 
paraffin wax and the spirit blowpipe were obvious 
enough; but the “dust-aspirator”—a sort of minia¬ 
ture vacuum cleaner—the portable microscope, the 
coil of Manila line, with an eye spliced into one end, 
and especially the abundance of blank-labelled micro¬ 
scope slides, all of which I saw him pack in the case 
with deliberate care, defeated me utterly. 

About ten o’clock on the following morning we 
stepped from the train in Welsbury Station, and hav- 


THE TOUCHSTONE 


139 


ing recovered our bicycles from the luggage van, 
wheeled them through the barrier and mounted. 
During the train journey we had both studied the one- 
inch Ordnance map to such purpose that we were vir¬ 
tually in familiar surroundings and immune from the 
necessity of seeking directions from the natives. As 
we cleared the town we glanced up the broad by-road 
to the left which led to the race-course; then we rode 
on briskly for a mile, which brought us to the spot 
where the footpath to Merbridge joined the road. 
Here we dismounted and, lifting our bicycles over the 
stile, followed the path towards a small wood which 
we could see ahead, crowning a low hill. 

“For such a good path,” Thorndyke remarked as 
we approached the wood, “it is singularly unfre¬ 
quented. I haven’t seen a soul since we left the road.” 
He glanced at the map as the path entered the wood, 
and when we had walked on a couple of hundred 
yards, he halted and stood his bicycle against a tree. 
“The chalk-pit should be about here,” said he, 
“though it is impossible to see.” He grasped a stem 
of one of the small bushes that crowded on to the 
path and pulled it aside. Then he uttered an ex¬ 
clamation. 

“Just look at that, Jervis. It is a positive scan¬ 
dal that a public path should be left in this condi¬ 
tion.” 

Certainly Mr. Crowhurst had not exaggerated. It 
was a most dangerous place. The parted branches 
revealed a chasm some thirty feet deep, the brink of 


140 


THE BLUE SCARAB 


which, masked by the bushes, was but a matter of 
inches from the edge of the path. 

“We had better go back,” said Thorndyke, “and 
find the entrance to the pit, which seems to be to the 
right. The first thing is to ascertain exactly where 
Harewood fell. Then we can come back and examine 
the place from above.” 

We turned back, and presently found a faint track, 
which we followed until, descending steeply, it brought 
us out into the middle of the pit. It was evidently 
an ancient pit, for the sides were blackened by age, 
and the floor was occupied by a number of trees, 
some of considerable size. Against one of these we 
leaned our bicycles and then walked slowly round at 
the foot of the frowning cliff. 

“This seems to be below the path,” said Thorndyke, 
glancing up at the grey wall which jutted out above 
in stages like an inverted flight of steps. “Some¬ 
where hereabouts we should find some traces of the 
tragedy.” 

Even as he spoke my eye caught a spot of white 
on a block of chalk, and on the freshly fractured sur¬ 
face a significant brownish-red stain. The block lay 
opposite the mouth of an artificial cave—an old 
wagon-shelter, but now empty—and immediately 
under a markedly overhanging part of the cliff. 

“This is undoubtedly the place where he fell,” said 
Thorndyke. “You can see where the stretcher was 
placed—an old-pattern stretcher with wheel-runners 
—and there is a little spot of broken soil at the top 


THE TOUCHSTONE 


141 

where he came over. Well, apart from the robbery, 
a clear fall of over thirty feet is enough to account 
for a fractured skull. Will you stay here, Jervis, 
while I run up and look at the path?” 

He went off towards the entrance, and presently I 
heard him above, pulling aside the bushes, and after 
one or two trials, he appeared directly overhead. 

“There are plenty of footprints on the path,” said 
he, “but nothing abnormal. No trampling or signs of 
a struggle. I am going on a little farther.” 

He withdrew behind the bushes, and I proceeded 
to inspect the interior of the cave, noting the smoke- 
blackened roof and the remains of a recent fire, which, 
with a number of rabbit bones and a discarded tea- 
boiler of the kind used by the professional tramp, 
seemed not without a possible bearing on our investi¬ 
gation. I was thus engaged when I heard Thorndyke 
hail me from above, and coming out of the cave, I saw 
his head thrust between the branches. He seemed to 
be lying down, for his face was nearly on a level with 
the top of the cliff. 

“I want to take an impression,” he called out. 
“Will you bring up the paraffin and the blower? And 
you might bring the coil of line, too.” 

I hurried away to the place where our bicycles were 
standing, and opening the research case, took out the 
coil of line, the tin of paraffin wax and the spirit blow¬ 
pipe, and having ascertained that the container of the 
latter was full, I ran up the incline and made my way 
along the path. Some distance along, I found my col- 


142 


THE BLUE SCARAB 


league nearly hidden in the bushes, lying prone, with 
his head over the edge of the cliff. 

“You see, Jervis/ 5 he said as I crawled alongside 
and looked over, “this is a possible way down, and 
some one has used it quite recently. He climbed down 
with his face to the cliff—you can see the clear im¬ 
pression of the toe of a boot in the loam on that pro¬ 
jection, and you can even make out the shape of an 
iron toe-tip. Now the problem is how to get down to 
take the impression without dislodging the earth 
above it. I think I will secure myself with the line. 55 

“It is hardly worth the risk of a broken neck, 55 said 
I. “Probably the print is that of some schoolboy. 55 

“It is a man’s foot, 55 he replied. “Most likely it 
has no connection with our case. But it may have, 
and as a shower of rain would obliterate it we ought 
to secure it. 55 As he spoke, he passed the end of the 
cord through the eye and slipped the loop over his 
shoulders, drawing it tight under his arms. Then, 
having made the line fast to the butt of a small tree, 
he cautiously lowered himself over the edge and 
climbed down to the projection. As soon as he had 
a secure footing, I passed the spare cord through the 
ring on the lid of the wax tin and lowered it to him, 
and when he had unfastened it, I drew up the cord 
and in the same way let down the blowpipe. Then I 
watched his neat, methodical procedure. First he 
took out a spoonful of the powdered, or grated, wax 
and very delicately sprinkled it on the toe-print until 
the latter was evenly but very thinly covered. Next 


THE TOUCHSTONE 


143 


he lit the blow-lamp, and as soon as the blue flame 
began to roar from the pipe, he directed it on to the 
toe-print. Almost instantly the powder melted, glaz¬ 
ing the impression like a coat of varnish. Then the 
flame was removed and the film of wax at once solidi¬ 
fied and became dull and opaque. A second, heavier 
sprinkling with the powder, followed by another ap¬ 
plication of the flame, thickened the film of wax, and 
this process, repeated four or five times, eventually 
produced a solid cake. Then Thorndyke extinguished 
the blow-lamp, and securing it and the tin to the cord, 
directed me to pull them up. “And you might send 
me down the field-glasses,” he added. “There is 
something farther down that I can’t quite make out.” 

I slipped the glasses from my shoulder, and open¬ 
ing the case, tied the cord to the leather sling and 
lowered it down the cliff; and then I watched with 
some curiosity as Thorndyke stood on his insecure 
perch steadily gazing through the glasses (they were 
Zeiss 8-prismatics) at a clump of wallflowers that 
grew from a boss of chalk about half-way down. 
Presently he lowered the glasses and, slinging them 
round his neck by their lanyard, turned his attention 
to the cake of wax. It was by this time quite solid, 
and when he had tested it, he lifted it carefully and 
placed it in the empty binocular case, when I drew 
it up. 

“I want you, Jervis,” Thorndyke called up, “to 
steady the line. I am going down to that wallflower 
clump.” 


144 


THE BLUE SCARAB 


It looked extremely unsafe, but I knew it was use¬ 
less to protest, so I hitched the line around a massive 
stump and took a firm grip of the “fall.” 

“Ready,” I sang out; and forthwith Thorndyke 
began to creep across the face of the cliff with feet 
and hands clinging to almost invisible projections. 
Fortunately, there was at this part no overhang, and 
though my heart was in my mouth as I watched, I 
saw him cross the perilous space in safety. Arrived 
at the clump, he drew an envelope from his pocket, 
stooped and picked up some small object, which he 
placed in the envelope, returning the latter to his 
pocket. Then he gave me another bad five minutes 
while he recrossed the nearly vertical surface to his 
starting-point; but at length this, too, was safely ac¬ 
complished, and when he finally climbed up over the 
edge and stood beside me on solid earth, I drew a 
deep breath and turned to revile him. 

“Well,” I demanded sarcastically, “what have you 
gathered at the risk of your neck? Is it samphire or 
edelweiss?” 

He drew the envelope from his pocket, and dip¬ 
ping into it, produced a cigarette-holder—a cheap 
bone affair, black and clammy with long service and 
still holding the butt of a hand-made cigarette—and 
handed it to me. I turned it over, smelled it and 
hastily handed it back. “For my part,” said I, “I 
wouldn’t have risked the cervical vertebrae of a yellow 
cat for it. What do you expect to learn from it?” 

“Of course, I expect nothing. We are just collect- 


THE TOUCHSTONE 


145 


ing facts on the chance that they may turn out to be 
relevant. Here, for instance, we find that a man has 
descended, within a few yards of where Harewood 
fell, by this very inconvenient route, instead of going 
round to the entrance to the pit. He must have had 
some reason for adopting this undesirable mode of 
descent. Possibly, he was in a hurry, and probably 
he belonged to the district, since a stranger would not 
know of the existence of this short cut. Then it seems 
likely that this was his cigarette tube. If you look 
over, you will see by those vertical scrapes on the 
chalk that he slipped and must have nearly fallen. At 
that moment he probably dropped the tube, for you 
notice that the wallflower clump is directly under the 
marks of his toes.” 

“Why do you suppose he did not recover the 
tube?” 

“Because the descent slopes away from the position 
of the clump, and he had no trusty Jervis with a stout 
cord to help him to cross the space. And if he went 
down this way because he was hurried, he would not 
have time to search for the tube. But if the tube was 
not his, still it belonged to somebody who has been 
here recently.” 

“Is there anything that leads you to connect this 
man with the crime?” 

“Nothing but time and place,” he replied. “The 
man has been down into the pit close to where Hare- 
wood was robbed and possibly murdered, and as the 
traces are quite recent, he must have been there near 


THE BLUE SCARAB 


146 

about the time of the robbery. That is all. I am 
considering the traces of this man in particular be¬ 
cause there are no traces of any other. But we may 
as well have a look at the path, which, as you see, 
yields good impressions.” 

We walked slowly along the path towards Mer- 
bridge, keeping at the edges and scrutinizing the sur¬ 
face closely. In the shady hollows, the soft loam 
bore prints of many feet, and among them we could 
distinguish one with an iron toe-tip, but it was nearly 
obliterated by another studded with hob-nails. 

“We shan’t get much information here,” said Thorn- 
dyke as he turned about. “The search party have 
trodden out the important prints. Let us see if we 
can find out where the man with the toe-tips 
went to.” 

We searched the path on the Welsbury side of the 
chalk-pit, but found no trace of him. Then we went 
into the pit, and having located the place where he 
descended, sought for some other exit than the track 
leading to the path. Presently, half-way up the 
slope, we found a second track, bearing away in the 
direction of Merbridge. Following this for some dis¬ 
tance, we came to a small hollow at the bottom of 
which was a muddy space. And here we both halted 
abruptly, for in the damp ground were the clear im¬ 
prints of a pair of boots which we could see had, in 
addition to the toe-tips, half-tips to the heels. 

“We had better have wax casts of these,” said 
Thorndyke, “to compare with the boots of the man 


THE TOUCHSTONE 


147 

Fletcher. I will do them while you go back for the 
bicycles.” 

By the time that I returned with the machines two 
of the footprints were covered with a cake each of 
wax, and Thorndyke had left the track and was peer¬ 
ing among the bushes. I inquired what he was look¬ 
ing for. 

“It is a forlorn hope, as Marchmont would say,” he 
replied, “but I am looking to see if the will has been 
thrown away here. It was quite probably jettisoned 
at once, and this is the most probable route for the 
robber to have taken, if he knew of it. You see by 
the map that it must lead nearly directly to the race¬ 
course, and it avoids both the path and the main road. 
While the wax is setting we might as well look 
round.” 

It seemed a hopeless enough proceeding and I 
agreed to it without enthusiasm. Leaving the track 
on the opposite side to that which Thorndyke was 
searching, I wandered among the bushes and the little 
open spaces, peering about me and reminding myself 
of that “aged, aged man” who 

“Sometimes searched the grassy knolls, 

For wheels of hansom cabs.” 

I had worked my way nearly back to where I could 
see Thorndyke, also returning, when my glance fell 
on a small, brown object caught among the branches 
of a bush. It was a man’s pigskin purse; and as I 


i 4 8 THE BLUE SCARAB 

picked it out of the bush I saw that it was open and 
empty. 

With my prize in my hand, I hastened to the spot 
where Thorndyke was lifting the wax casts. He 
looked up and asked, “No luck, I suppose?” 

I held out the purse, on which he pounced eagerly. 
“But this is most important, Jervis,” he exclaimed. 
“It is almost certainly Harewood’s purse. You see 
the initials, ‘J- H.,’ stamped on the flap. Then we 
were right as to the direction that the robber took. 
And it would pay to search this place exhaustively 
for the will, though we can’t do that now, as we have 
to go on to Barwood. I wrote to say we were coming. 
We had better get back to the path now and make for 
the road. Barwood is only half an hour’s run.” 

We packed the casts in the research case (which 
was strapped to Thorndyke’s bicycle), and turning 
back, made our way to the path. As it was still 
deserted, we ventured to mount, and soon reached the 
road, along which we started at a good pace towards 
Barwood. 

Half an hour’s ride brought us into the main street 
of the little town, and when we dismounted at the 
police station we found the Chief Constable himself 
waiting to receive us, courteously eager to assist us, 
but possessed by a devouring curiosity which was 
somewhat inconvenient. 

“I have done as you asked me in your letter, sir,” 
he said. “Fletcher’s body is, of course, in the mor¬ 
tuary, but I have had all his clothes and effects 


THE TOUCHSTONE 


149 


brought here; and I have had them put in my private 
office, so that you can look them over in comfort.” 

“It is exceedingly good of you,” said Thorndyke, 
“and most helpful.” He unstrapped the research case, 
and following the officer into his sanctum, looked 
round with deep approval. A large table had been 
cleared for the examination, and the dead pickpocket’s 
clothes and effects neatly arranged at one end. 

Thorndyke’s first proceeding was to pick up the 
dead man’s boots—a smart but flimsy pair of light 
brown leather, rather down at heel and in need of 
re-soling. Neither toes nor heels bore any tips or 
even nails excepting the small fastening brads. Hav¬ 
ing exhibited them to me without remark, Thorndyke 
placed them on a sheet of white paper and made a 
careful tracing of the soles, a proceeding that seemed 
to surprise the Chief Constable, for he remarked, “I 
should hardly have thought that the question of foot¬ 
prints would arise in this case. You can’t charge a 
dead man.” 

Thorndyke agreed that this seemed to be true; and 
then he proceeded to an operation that fairly made 
the officer’s eyes bulge. Opening the research case— 
into which the officer cast an inquisitive glance—he 
took out the dust-aspirator, the nozzle of which he 
inserted into one after another of the dead thief’s 
pockets while I worked the pump. When he had gone 
through them all, he opened the receiver and extracted 
quite a considerable ball of dusty fluff. Placing this 
on a glass slide, he tore it in halves with a pair of 


150 


THE BLUE SCARAB 


mounted needles and passed one half to me, when we 
both fell to work “teasing” it out into an open mesh, 
portions of which we separated and laid—each in a 
tiny pool of glycerine—on blank-labelled glass slides, 
applying to each slide its cover-glass and writing on 
the label, “Dust from Fletcher’s pockets.” 

When the series was complete, Thorndyke brought 
out the microscope, and fitting on a one-inch objec¬ 
tive, quickly examined the slides, one after another, 
and then pushed the microscope to me. So far as I 
could see, the dust was just ordinary dust—princi¬ 
pally made up of broken cotton fibres with a few 
fibres of wool, linen, wood, jute, and others that I 
could not name and some undistinguishable mineral 
particles. But I made no comment, and resigning 
the microscope to the Chief Constable—who glared 
through it, breathing hard, and remarked that the 
dust was “rummy-looking stuff”—watched Thorn- 
dyke’s further proceedings. And very odd proceed¬ 
ings they were. 

First he laid the five stolen watches in a row, and 
with a Coddington lens minutely examined the dial 
of each. Then he opened the back of each in turn 
and copied into his notebook the watch-repairers’ 
scratched inscriptions. Next he produced from the 
case a number of little vulcanite rods, and laying out 
five labelled slides, dropped a tiny drop of glycerine 
on each, covering it at once with a watch-glass to 
protect it from falling dust. Then he stuck a little 
label on each watch, wrote a number on it and simi- 


THE TOUCHSTONE 


151 

larly numbered the five slides. His next proceeding 
was to take out the glass of watch No. 1 and pick up 
one of the vulcanite rods, which he rubbed briskly on 
a silk handkerchief and passed slowly across and 
around the dial of the watch, after which he held the 
rod close to the glycerine on slide No. 1 and tapped 
it sharply with the blade of his pocket-knife. Then 
he dropped a cover-glass on to the glycerine and made 
a rapid inspection of the specimen through the micro¬ 
scope. 

This operation he repeated on the other four 
watches, using a fresh rod for each, and when he had 
finished he turned to the open-mouthed officer. “I 
take it,” said he, “that the watch which has the chain 
attached to it is Mr. Harewood’s watch?” 

“Yes, sir. That helped us to identify it.” 

Thorndyke looked at the watch reflectively. At¬ 
tached to the bow by a short length of green tape 
was a small, rather elaborate key. This my friend 
picked up, and taking a fresh mounted needle, inserted 
it into the barrel of the key, from which he then 
withdrew it with a tiny ball of fluff on its point. I 
hastily prepared a slide and handed it to him, when, 
with a pair of dissecting scissors, he cut off a piece 
of the fluff and let it fall into the glycerine. He re¬ 
peated this manoeuvre with two more slides and then 
labelled the three, “Key, outside,” “middle” and 
“inside,” and in that order examined them under the 
microscope. 

My own examination of the specimens yielded very 


THE BLUE SCARAB 


152 

little. They all seemed to be common dust, though 
that from the face of watch No. 3 contained a few 
broken fragments of what looked like animal hairs— 
possibly cat’s—as also did the key-fluff marked “out¬ 
side.” But if this had any significance, I could not 
guess what it was. As to the Chief Constable, he 
clearly looked on the whole proceeding as a sort of 
legerdemain with no obvious purpose, for he re¬ 
marked, as we were packing up to go, “I am glad 
I’ve seen how you do it, sir. But all the same, I think 
you are flogging a dead horse. We know who com¬ 
mitted the crime and we know he’s beyond the reach 
of the law.” 

“Well,” said Thorndyke, “one must earn one’s fee, 
you know. I shall put Fletcher’s boots and the five 
watches in evidence at the inquest to-morrow, and I 
will ask you to leave the labels on the watches.” 

With renewed thanks and a hearty handshake he 
bade the courteous officer adieu, and we rode off to 
catch the train to London. 

That evening, after dinner, we brought out the 
specimens and went over them at our leisure; and 
Thorndyke added a further specimen by drawing a 
knotted piece of twine through the cigarette-holder 
that he had salved from the chalk-pit, and teasing 
out the unsavoury, black substance that came out on 
the string in glycerine on a slide. When he had exam¬ 
ined it, he passed it to me. The dark, tarry liquid 
somewhat obscured the detail, but I could make out 
fragments of the same animal hairs that I had noted 


THE TOUCHSTONE 


153 

in the other specimens, only here they were much 
more numerous. I mentioned my observation to 
Thorndyke. “They are certainly parts of mammalian 
hairs/’ I said, “and they look like the hairs of a cat. 
Are they from a cat?” 

“Rabbit,” Thorndyke replied curtly; and even 
then, I am ashamed to admit, I did not perceive the 
drift of the investigation. 

The room in the Welsbury Town Hall had filled 
up some minutes before the time fixed for the open¬ 
ing of the inquest, and in the interval, when the jury 
had retired to view the body in the adjacent mor¬ 
tuary, I looked round the assembly. Mr. Marchmont 
and Mr. Crowhurst were present, and a youngish, 
horsey-looking man in cord breeches and leggings, 
whom I correctly guessed to be Arthur Baxfield. Our 
friend the Chief Constable of Barwood was also there, 
and with him Thorndyke exchanged a few words in 
a retired corner. The rest of the company were 
strangers. 

As soon as the coroner and the jury had taken their 
places the medical witness was called. The cause of 
death, he stated, was dislocation of the neck, accom¬ 
panied by a depressed fracture of the skull. The 
fracture might have been produced by a blow with a 
heavy, blunt weapon, or by the deceased falling on 
his head. The witness adopted the latter view, as the 
dislocation showed that deceased had fallen in that 


manner. 


THE BLUE SCARAB 


154 

The next witness was Mr. Crowhurst, who repeated 
to the Court what he had told us, and further stated 
that on leaving deceased’s house he went straight 
home, as he had an appointment with a friend. He 
was followed by Baxfield, who gave evidence to the 
same effect, and stated that on leaving the house of 
deceased he went to his place of business at Wels- 
bury. He was about to retire when Thorndyke rose 
to cross-examine. 

“At what time did you reach your place of busi¬ 
ness?” he asked. 

The witness hesitated for a few moments and then 
replied, “Half-past four.” 

“And what time did you leave deceased’s house?” 

“Two o’clock,” was the reply. 

“What is the distance?” 

“In a direct line, about two miles. But I didn’t 
go direct. I took a round in the country by Lenfield.” 

“That would take you near the race-course on the 
way back. Did you go to the races?” 

“No. The races were just over when I returned.” 

There was a slight pause and then Thorndyke 
asked, “Do you smoke much, Mr. Baxfield?” 

The witness looked surprised, and so did the jury, 
but the former replied, “A fair amount. About 
fifteen cigarettes a day.” 

“What brand of cigarettes do you smoke, and what 
kind of tobacco is it?” 

“I make my own cigarettes. I make them of shag.” 

Here protesting murmurs arose from the jury, and 


THE TOUCHSTONE 


155 

the coroner remarked stiffly, “These questions do not 
appear to have much connection with the subject of 
this inquiry.” 

“You may take it, sir,” replied Thorndyke, “that 
they have a very direct bearing on it.” Then, turning 
to the witness he asked, “Do you use a cigarette- 
tube?” 

“Sometimes I do,” was the reply. 

“Have you lost a cigarette-tube lately?” 

The witness directed a startled glance at Thorndyke 
and replied after some hesitation, “I believe I mislaid 
one a little time ago.” 

“When and where did you lose that tube?” Thorn¬ 
dyke asked. 

“I—I really couldn't say,” replied Baxfield, turning 
perceptibly pale. 

Thorndyke opened his dispatch box, and taking out 
the tube that he had salved at so much risk, handed 
it to the witness. “Is that the tube that you lost?” 
he asked. 

At this question Baxfield turned pale as death, and 
the hand in which he received the tube shook as if 
with a palsy. “It may be,” he faltered. “I wouldn’t 
swear to it. It is like the one I lost.” 

Thorndyke took it from him and passed it to the 
coroner. “I am putting this tube in evidence, sir,” 
said he. Then, addressing the witness, he said, “You 
stated that you did not go to the races. Did you go 
on the course or inside the grounds at all?” 

Baxfield moistened his lips and replied, “I just 


THE BLUE SCARAB 


156 

went in for a minute or two, but I didn’t stay. The 
races were over, and there was a very rough crowd.” 

“While you were in that crowd, Mr. Baxfield, did 
you have your pocket picked?” 

There was an expectant silence in the Court as 
Baxfield replied in a low voice: 

“Yes. I lost my watch.” 

Again Thorndyke opened the dispatch box, and 
taking out a watch (it was the one that had been 
labelled 3), handed it to the witness. “Is that the 
watch that you lost?” he asked. 

Baxfield held the watch in his trembling hand and 
replied hesitatingly, “I believe it is, but I won’t swear 
to it.” 

There was a pause. Then, in grave, impressive 
tones, Thorndyke said, “Now, Mr. Baxfield, I am 
going to ask you a question which you need not an¬ 
swer if you consider that by doing so you would 
prejudice your position in any way. That question is, 
When your pocket was picked, were any articles be¬ 
sides this watch taken from your person? Don’t 
hurry. Consider your answer carefully.” 

For some moments Baxfield remained silent, regard¬ 
ing Thorndyke with a wild, affrighted stare. At 
length he began falteringly, “I don’t remember miss¬ 
ing anything-” and then stopped. 

“Could the witness be allowed to sit down, sir?” 
Thorndyke asked. And when the permission had been 
given and a chair placed, Baxfield sat down heavily 
and cast a bewildered glance round the Court. “I 



THE TOUCHSTONE 


157 


think/’ he said, addressing Thorndyke, “I had better 
tell you exactly what happened and take my chance 
of the consequences. When I left my uncle’s house 
on Monday, I took a circuit through the fields and 
then entered Gilbert’s Copse to wait for my uncle 
and tell him what I thought of his conduct in leaving 
the bulk of his property to a stranger. I struck the 
path that I knew my uncle would take and walked 
along it slowly to meet him. I did meet him—on the 
path, just above where he was found—and I began 
to say what was in my mind. But he wouldn’t listen. 
He flew into a rage, and as I was standing in the 
middle of the path, he tried to push past me. In 
doing so he caught his foot in a bramble and staggered 
back, then he disappeared through the bushes and a 
few seconds after I heard a thud down below. I 
pulled the bushes aside and looked down into the 
chalk-pit, and there I saw him lying with his head 
all on one side. Now, I happened to know of a short 
cut down into the pit. It was rather a dangerous 
climb, but I took it to get down as quickly as pos¬ 
sible. It was there that I dropped the cigarette-tube. 
When I got to my uncle I could see that he was dead. 
His skull was battered and his neck was broken. 
Then the devil put into my head the idea of making 
away with the will. But I knew that if I took the 
will only, suspicion would fall on me. So I took most 
of his valuables—the wallet, his watch and chain, 
his purse and his ring. The purse I emptied and 
threw away, and flung the ring after it. I took the 


THE BLUE SCARAB 


158 

will out of the wallet—it had just been dropped in 
loose—and put it in an inner pocket. Then I dropped 
the wallet and the watch and chain into my outside 
coat pocket. 

“I struck across country, intending to make for the 
race-course and drop the things among the crowd, so 
that they might be picked up and safely carried 
away. But when I got there a gang of pickpockets 
saved me the trouble; they mobbed and hustled me 
and cleared my pockets of everything but my keys 
and the will.” 

“And what has become of the will?” asked Thorn- 
dyke. 

“I have it here.” He dipped into his breast pocket 
and produced a folded paper, which he handed to 
Thorndyke, who opened it, and having glanced at it, 
passed it to the coroner. 

That was practically the end of the inquest. The 
jury decided to accept Baxfield’s statement and re¬ 
corded a verdict of “Death by Misadventure,” leav¬ 
ing Baxfield to be dealt with by the proper authorities. 

“An interesting and eminently satisfactory case,” 
remarked Thorndyke, as we sat over a rather late 
dinner. “Essentially simple, too. The elucidation 
turned, as you probably noticed, on a single illumi¬ 
nating fact.” 

“I judged that it was so,” said I, “though the illumi¬ 
nation of that fact has not yet reached me.” 

“Well,” said Thorndyke, “let us first take the gen- 


THE TOUCHSTONE 


159 


eral aspect of the case as it was presented by March- 
mont. The first thing, of course, that struck one was 
that the loss of the will might easily have converted 
Baxfield from a minor beneficiary to the sole heir. 
But even if the Court agreed to recognize the will, it 
would have to be guided by the statements of the only 
two men to whom its provisions were even approxi¬ 
mately known, and Baxfield could have made any 
statement he pleased. It was impossible to ignore the 
fact that the loss of the will was very greatly to Bax- 
field’s advantage. 

“When the stolen property was discovered in 
Fletcher’s possession it looked, at the first glance, as 
if the mystery of the crime was solved. But there 
were several serious inconsistencies. First, how came 
Fletcher to be in this solitary wood, remote from any 
railway or even road? He appeared to be a London 
pickpocket. When he was killed he was travelling 
to London by train. It seemed probable that he had 
come from London by train to ply his trade at the 
races. Then, as you know, criminological experience 
shows that the habitual criminal is a rigid specialist. 
The burglar, the coiner, the pickpocket, each keeps 
strictly to his own special line. Now, Fletcher was a 
pickpocket, and had evidently been picking pockets 
on the race-course. The probabilities were against his 
being the original robber and in favour of his having 
picked the pocket of the person who robbed Hare- 
wood. But if this were so, who was that person? 
Once more the probabilities suggested Baxfield. 


i6o 


THE BLUE SCARAB 


There was the motive, as I have said, and further, 
the pocket-picking had apparently taken place on the 
race-course, and Baxfield was known to be a fre¬ 
quenter of race-courses. But again, if Baxfield were 
the person robbed by Fletcher, then one of the five 
watches was probably Baxfield’s watch. Whether it 
was so or not might have been very difficult to prove, 
but here came in the single illuminating fact that I 
have spoken of. 

“You remember that when Marchmont opened the 
case he mentioned that Baxfield was a manufacturer 
of felt hats, and Crowhurst told us that he was a sort 
of foreman or manager of the factory.” 

“Yes, I remember, now you speak of it. But what 
is the bearing of the fact?” 

“My dear Jervis!” exclaimed Thorndyke. “Don’t 
you see that it gave us a touchstone? Consider, now. 
What is a felt hat? It is just a mass of agglutinated 
rabbits’ hair. The process of manufacture consists 
in blowing a jet of the more or less disintegrated hair 
on to a revolving steel cone which is moistened by a 
spray of an alcoholic solution of shellac. But, of 
course, a quantity of the finer and more minute par¬ 
ticles of the broken hairs miss the cone and float about 
in the air. The air of the factory is thus charged 
with the dust of broken rabbit hairs; and this dust 
settles on and penetrates the clothing of the workers. 
But when clothing becomes charged with dust, that 
dust tends to accumulate in the pockets and find its 
way into the hollows and interstices of any objects 


THE TOUCHSTONE 


161 


carried in those pockets. Thus, if one of the five 
watches was Baxfield’s it would almost certainly show 
traces where this characteristic dust had crept under 
the bezel and settled on the dial. And so it turned 
out to be. When I inspected those five watches 
through the Coddington lens, on the dial of No. 3 
I saw a quantity of dust of this character. The elec¬ 
trified vulcanite rod picked it all up neatly and trans¬ 
ferred it to the slide, and under the microscope its 
nature was obvious. The owner of this watch was 
therefore, almost certainly, employed in a felt hat 
factory. But, of course, it was necessary to show not 
only the presence of rabbit hair in this watch, but its 
absence in the others and in Fletcher’s pockets, which 
I did. 

“Then with regard to Harewood’s watch. There 
was no rabbit hair on the dial, but there was a small 
quantity on the fluff from the key barrel. Now, if 
that rabbit-hair had come from Harewood’s pocket it 
would have been uniformly distributed through the 
fluff. But it was not. It was confined exclusively to 
the part of the fluff that was exposed. Thus it had 
come from some pocket other than Harewood’s, and 
the owner of that pocket was almost certainly em¬ 
ployed in a felt hat factory, and was most probably 
the owner of watch No. 3. 

“Then there was the cigarette-tube. Its bore was 
loaded with rabbit hair. But its owner had unques¬ 
tionably been at the scene of the crime. There was 
a clear suggestion that his was the pocket in which 


162 


THE BLUE SCARAB 


the stolen watch had been carried and that he was 
the owner of watch No. 3. The problem was to piece 
this evidence together and prove definitely who this 
person was. And that I was able to do by means of 
a fresh item of evidence, which I acquired when I saw 
Baxfield at the inquest. I suppose you noticed his 
boots?” 

“I am afraid I didn’t,” I had to admit. 

“Well, I did. I watched his feet constantly, and 
when he crossed his legs I could see that he had iron 
toe-tips on his boots. That was what gave me con¬ 
fidence to push the cross-examination.” 

“It was certainly a rather daring cross-examination 
—and rather irregular, too,” said I. 

“It was extremely irregular,” Thorndyke agreed, 
“The coroner ought not to have permitted it. But it 
was all for the best. If the coroner had disallowed 
my questions we should have had to take criminal 
proceedings against Baxfield, whereas now that we 
have recovered the will, it is possible that no one will 
trouble to prosecute him.” 

Which, I subsequently ascertained, is what actually 
happened. 


V 


A FISHER OF MEN 

HE man,” observed Thorndyke, “who would 
successfully practise the scientific detection 



of crime must take all knowledge for his 
province. There is no single fact which may not, in 
particular circumstances, acquire a high degree of 
evidential value; and in such circumstances, success 
or failure is determined by the possession or non¬ 
possession of the knowledge wherewith to interpret 
the significance of that fact.” 

This obiter dictum was thrown off apropos of our 
investigation of the case rather magniloquently re¬ 
ferred to in the press as “The Blue Diamond Mys¬ 
tery”; and more particularly of an incident which 
occurred in the office of our old friend, Superintendent 
Miller, at Scotland Yard. Thorndyke had called to 
verify the few facts which had been communicated 
to him, and having put away his notebook and picked 
up his green canvas-covered research case, had risen 
to take his leave, when his glance fell on a couple 
of objects on a side-table—a leather handbag and a 
walking-stick, lashed together with string, to which 
was attached a descriptive label. 

He regarded them for a few moments reflectively 
and then glanced at the Superintendent. 


THE BLUE SCARAB 


164 

“Derelicts?” he inquired, “or jetsam?” 

“Jetsam,” the Superintendent replied, “literally jet¬ 
sam—thrown overboard to lighten the ship.” 

Here Inspector Badger, who had been a party to 
the conference, looked up eagerly. 

“Yes,” he broke in. “Perhaps the doctor wouldn’t 
mind having a look at them. It’s quite a nice little 
problem, doctor, and entirely in your line.” 

“What is the problem?” asked Thorndyke. 

“It’s just this,” said Badger. “Here is a bag. Now 
the question is, Whose bag is it? What sort of person 
is the owner? Where did he come from and where 
has he gone to?” 

Thorndyke chuckled. “That seems quite simple,” 
said he. “A cursory inspection ought to dispose of 
trivial details like those. But how did you come by 
the bag?” 

“The history of the derelicts,” said Miller, “is this: 
About four o’clock this morning, a constable on duty 
in King’s Road, Chelsea, saw a man walking on the 
opposite side of the road, carrying a hand-bag. There 
was nothing particularly suspicious in this, but still 
the constable thought he would cross and have a closer 
look at him. As he did so the man quickened his 
pace and, of course, the constable quickened his. 
Then the man broke into a run, and so did the con¬ 
stable, and a fine, stern chase started. Suddenly the 
man shot down a by-street, and as the constable 
turned the corner he saw his quarry turn into a sort 
of alley. Following him into this, and gaining on him 


A FISHER OF MEN 165 

perceptibly, he saw that the alley ended in a rather 
high wall. When the fugitive reached the wall he 
dropped his bag and stick and went over like a har¬ 
lequin. The constable went over after him, but not 
like a harlequin—he wasn’t dressed for the part. By 
the time he got over, into a large garden with a lot of 
fruit trees in it, my nabs had disappeared. He traced 
him by his footprints across the garden to another 
wall, and when he climbed over that he found himself 
in another by-street. But there was no sign of our 
agile friend. The constable ran up and down the 
street to the next crossings, blowing his whistle, but 
of course it was no go. So he went back across the 
garden and secured the bag and stick, which were at 
once sent here for examination.” 

“And no arrest has been made?” 

“Well,” replied Miller with a faint grin, “a con¬ 
stable in Oakley Street who had heard the whistle 
arrested a man who was carrying a suspicious-looking 
object. But he turned out to be a cornet player com¬ 
ing home from the theatre.” 

“Good,” said Thorndyke. “And now let us have a 
look at the bag, which I take it has already been 
examined?” 

“Yes, we’ve been through it,” replied Miller, “but 
everything has been put back as we found it.” 

Thorndyke picked up the bag and proceeded to 
make a systematic inspection of its exterior. 

“A good bag,” he commented; “quite an expensive 
one originally, though it has seen a good deal of serv- 


166 THE BLUE SCARAB 

ice. You noticed the muddy marks on the bottom?” 

“Yes,” said Miller. “Those were probably made 
when he dropped the bag to jump over the wall.” 

“Possibly,” said Thorndyke, “though they don’t 
look like street mud. But we shall probably get more 
information from the contents.” He opened the bag, 
and after a glance at its interior, spread out on the 
table a couple of sheets of foolscap from the sta¬ 
tionery rack, on which he began methodically to de¬ 
posit the contents of the bag, accompanying the 
process with a sort of running commentary on their 
obvious characteristics. 

“Item one: a small leather dressing wallet. Rather 
shabby, but originally of excellent quality. It con¬ 
tains two Swedish razors, a little Washita hone, a 
diminutive strop, a folding shaving-brush, which is 
slightly damp to the fingers and has a scent similar to 
that of the stick of shaving soap. You notice that the 
hone is distinctly concave in the middle and that the 
inscription on the razors, ‘Arensburg, Eskilstuna, 
Sweden, 5 is partly ground away. Then there is a box 
containing a very dry cake of soap, a little manicure 
set, a well-worn toothbrush, a nailbrush, dental-brush, 
button-hook, corn-razor, a small clothes-brush and a 
pair of small hairbrushes. It seems to me, Badger, 
that this wallet suggests—mind, I only say ‘suggests 5 
—a pretty complete answer to one of your ques¬ 
tions.” 

“I don’t see how,” said the Inspector. “Tell us 
what it suggests to you.” 


A FISHER OF MEN 167 

“It suggests to me,” replied Thorndyke, laying 
down the lens through which he had been inspecting 
the hairbrushes, “a middle-aged or elderly man with 
a shaven upper lip and a beard; a well-preserved, 
healthy man, neat, orderly, provident and careful as 
to his appearance; a man long habituated to travel¬ 
ling, and—though I don’t insist on this, but the ap¬ 
pearances suggest that he had been living for some 
time in a particular household, and that at the time 
when he lost the bag, he was changing his residence.” 

“He was that,” cackled the Inspector, “if the con¬ 
stable’s account of the way he went over that wall is 
to be trusted. But still, I don’t see how you have 
arrived at all those facts.” 

“Not facts, Badger,” Thorndyke corrected. “I said 
suggestions. And those suggestions may be quite mis¬ 
leading. There may be some factor, such as change 
of ownership of the wallet, which we have not allowed 
for. But, taking the appearances at their face value, 
that is what they suggest. There is the wallet itself, 
for instance—strong, durable, but shabby with years 
of wear. And observe that it is a travelling wallet and 
would be subjected to wear only during travel. Then 
further, as to the time factor, there are the hone and 
the razors. It takes a good many years to wear a 
Washita hone hollow or to wear away the blade of a 
Swedish razor until the maker’s mark is encroached 
on. The state of health, and to some extent the age, 
are suggested by the toothbrush and the dental-brush. 
He has lost some teeth, since he wears a plate, but 


THE BLUE SCARAB 


168 

not many; and he is free from pyorrhea and alveolar 
absorption. You don’t wear a toothbrush down like 
this on half a dozen rickety survivors. But a man 
whose teeth will bear hard brushing is probably well- 
preserved and healthy.” 

“You say that he shaves his upper lip but wears 
a beard,” said the Inspector. “How do you arrive 
at that?” 

“It is fairly obvious,” replied Thorndyke. “We 
see that he has razors and uses them, and we also see 
that he has a beard.” 

“Do we?” exclaimed Badger. “How do we?” 

Thorndyke delicately picked a hair from one of the 
hairbrushes and held it up. “That is not a scalp 
hair,” said he. “I should say that it came from the 
side of the chin.” 

Badger regarded the hair with evident disfavour. 
“Looks to me,” he remarked, “as if a small-tooth 
comb might have been useful.” 

“It does,” Thorndyke agreed, “but the appearance 
is deceptive. This is what is called a moniliform hair 
—like a string of beads. But the bead-like swellings 
are really parts of the hair. It is a diseased, or per¬ 
haps we should say an abnormal, condition.” He 
handed me the hair together with his lens, through 
which I examined it and easily recognized the char¬ 
acteristic swellings. 

“Yes,” said I, “it is an early case of trichorrexis 
nodosa” 

“Good Lord!” murmured the Inspector. “Sounds 


A FISHER OF MEN 169 

like a Russian nobleman. Is it a common com¬ 
plaint?” 

“It is not a rare disease—if you can call it a dis¬ 
ease,” I replied, “but it is a rare condition, taking 
the population as a whole.” 

“It is rather a remarkable coincidence that it should 
happen to occur in this particular case,” the Superin¬ 
tendent observed. 

“My dear Miller,” exclaimed Thorndyke, “surely 
your experience must have impressed on you the 
astonishing frequency of the unusual and the utter 
failure of the mathematical laws of probability in 
practice. Believe me, Miller, the Bread-and-butterfly 
was right. It is the exceptional that always happens.” 

Having discharged this paradox, he once more 
dived into the bag, and this time handed out a sin¬ 
gular and rather unsavoury-looking parcel, the outer 
investment of which was formed by what looked like 
an excessively dirty towel, but which, as Thorndyke 
delicately unrolled it, was seen to be only half a towel 
which was supplemented by a still dirtier and exces¬ 
sively ragged coloured handkerchief. This, too, being 
opened out, disclosed an extremely soiled and frayed 
collar (which, like the other articles, bore no name 
or mark), and a mass of grass, evidently used as pack¬ 
ing material. 

The Inspector picked up the collar and quoted re¬ 
flectively, “He is a man, neat, orderly and careful as 
to his appearance,” after which he dropped the collar 
and ostentatiously wiped his fingers. 


THE BLUE SCARAB 


170 

Thorndyke smiled grimly but refrained from rep¬ 
artee as he carefully separated the grass from the 
contained objects, which turned out to be a small tele¬ 
scopic jemmy, a jointed augur, a screwdriver and a 
bunch of skeleton keys. 

“One understands his unwillingness to encounter the 
constable with these rather significant objects in his 
possession,” Thorndyke remarked. “They would 
have been difficult to explain away.” He took up the 
heap of grass between his hands and gently com¬ 
pressed it to test its freshness. As he did so a tiny, 
cigar-shaped object dropped on the paper. 

“What is that?” asked the Superintendent. “It 
looks like a chrysalis.” 

“It isn’t,” said Thorndyke. “It is a shell, a species 
of Clausilia, I think.” He picked up the little shell 
and closely examined its mouth through his lens. 
“Yes,” he continued, “it is a Clausilia. Do you study 
our British mollusca, Badger?” 

“No, I don’t,” the Inspector replied with emphasis. 

“Pity,” murmured Thorndyke. “If you did, you 
would be interested to learn that the name of this 
little shell is Clausilia biplicata” 

“I don’t care what its beastly name is,” said 
Badger. “I want to know whose bag this is; what 
the owner is like; and where he came from and where 
he has gone to. Can you tell us that?” 

Thorndyke regarded the Inspector with wooden 
gravity. “It is all very obvious,” said he, “very ob¬ 
vious. But still, I think I should like to fill in a few 


A FISHER OF MEN 


171 

details before making a definite statement. Yes, I 
think I will reserve my judgment until I have con¬ 
sidered the matter a little further.” 

The Inspector received this statement with a dubi¬ 
ous grin. He was in somewhat of a dilemma. My 
colleague was addicted to a certain dry facetiousness, 
and was probably “pulling” the Inspector’s “leg.” 
But, on the other hand, I knew, and so did both the 
detectives, that it was perfectly conceivable that he 
had actually solved Badger’s problem, impossible as 
it seemed, and was holding back his knowledge until 
he had seen whither it led. 

“Shall we take a glance at the stick?” said he, pick¬ 
ing it up as he spoke and running his eye over its 
not very distinctive features. It was a common ash 
stick, with a crooked handle polished and darkened 
by prolonged contact with an apparently ungloved 
hand, and it was smeared for about three inches from 
the tip with a yellowish mud. The iron shoe of the 
ferrule was completely worn away and the deficiency 
had been made good by driving a steel boot-stud into 
the exposed end. 

“A thrifty gentleman, this,” Thorndyke remarked, 
pointing to the stud as he measured the diameter of 
the ferrule with his pocket calliper-gauge. “Twenty- 
three thirty-seconds is the diameter,” he added, look¬ 
ing gravely at the Inspector. “You had better make 
a note of that, Badger.” 

The Inspector smiled sourly as Thorndyke laid 
down the stick, and once more picking up the little 


THE BLUE SCARAB 


172 

green canvas case that contained his research outfit, 
prepared to depart. 

“You will hear from us, Miller,” he said, “if we pick 
up anything that will be useful to you. And now, 
Jervis, we must really take ourselves off.” 

As the tinkling hansom bore us down Whitehall 
towards Waterloo, I remarked, “Badger half suspects 
you of having withheld from him some valuable in¬ 
formation in respect of that bag.” 

“He does,” Thorndyke agreed with a mischievous 
smile; “and he doesn’t in the least suspect me of 
having given him a most illuminating hint.” 

“But did you?” I asked, rapidly reviewing the con¬ 
versation and deciding that the facts elicited from the 
dressing wallet could hardly be described as hints. 

“My learned friend,” he replied, “is pleased to 
counterfeit obtuseness. It won’t do, Jervis. I’ve 
known you too long.” 

I grinned with vexation. Evidently I had missed 
the point of a subtle demonstration, and I knew that 
it was useless to ask further questions; and for the 
remainder of our journey in the cab I struggled vainly 
to recover the “illuminating hint” that the detectives 
—and I—had failed to note. Indeed, so preoccupied 
was I with this problem that I rather overlooked the 
fact that the jettisoned bag was really no concern of 
ours, and that we were actually engaged in the inves¬ 
tigation of a crime of which, at present, I knew prac¬ 
tically nothing. It was not until we had secured an 
empty compartment and the train had begun to move 


A FISHER OF MEN 


173 


that this suddenly dawned on me; whereupon I dis¬ 
missed the bag problem and applied to Thorndyke for 
details of the “Brentford Train Mystery.” 

“To call it a mystery,” said he, “is a misuse of 
words. It appears to be a simple train robbery. The 
identity of the robber is unknown, but there is noth¬ 
ing very mysterious in that; and the crime otherwise 
is quite commonplace. The circumstances are these: 
Some time ago, Mr. Lionel Montague, of the firm, 
Lyons, Montague & Salaman, art dealers, bought from 
a Russian nobleman a very valuable diamond neck¬ 
lace and pendant. The peculiarity of this necklace was 
that the stones were all of a pale blue colour and 
pretty accurately matched, so that in addition to the 
aggregate value of the stones—which were all of large 
size and some very large—there was the value of the 
piece as a whole due to this uniformity of colour. 
Mr. Montague gave £70,000 for it, and considered 
that he had made an excellent bargain. I should 
mention that Montague was the chief buyer for the 
firm, and that he spent most of his time travelling 
about the Continent in search of works of art and 
other objects suitable for the purposes of his firm, 
and that, naturally, he was an excellent judge of such 
things. Now, it seems that he was not satisfied with 
the settings of this necklace, and as soon as he had 
purchased it he handed it over to Messrs. Binks, of 
Old Bond Street, to have the settings replaced by 
others of better design. Yesterday morning he was 
notified by Binks that the resetting was completed, 


THE BLUE SCARAB 


174 

and in the afternoon he called to inspect the work and 
take the necklace away if it was satisfactory. The 
interview between Binks and Montague took place in 
a room behind the shop, but it appears that Montague 
came out into the shop to get a better light for his 
inspection; and Mr. Binks states that as his customer 
stood facing the door, examining the new settings, he, 
Binks, noticed a man standing by the doorway fur¬ 
tively watching Mr. Montague.” 

“There is nothing very remarkable in that,” said 
I. “If a man stands at a shop door with a necklace 
of blue diamonds in his hand, he is rather likely to 
attract attention.” 

“Yes,” Thorndyke agreed. “But the significance of 
an antecedent is apt to be more appreciated after the 
consequences have developed. Binks is now very 
emphatic about the furtive watcher. However, to 
continue: Mr. Montague, being satisfied with the 
new settings, replaced the necklace in its case, put the 
latter into his bag—which he had brought with him 
from the inner room—and a minute or so later left 
the shop. That was about 5 p.m.; and he seems to 
have gone direct to the flat of his partner, Mr. Sala- 
man, with whom he had been staying for a fortnight, 
at Queen’s Gate. There he remained until about half- 
past eight, when he came out accompanied by Mr. 
Salaman. The latter carried a small suit-case, while 
Montague carried a handbag in which was the neck¬ 
lace. It is not known whether it contained anything 
else. 


A FISHER OF MEN 


i 75 


“From Queen’s Gate the two men proceeded to 
Waterloo, walking part of the way and covering the 
remainder by omnibus.” 

“By omnibus!” I exclaimed, “with seventy thou¬ 
sand pounds worth of diamonds about them!” 

“Yes, it sounds odd. But people who habitually 
handle portable property of great value seem to re¬ 
semble those who habitually handle explosives. They 
gradually become unconscious of the risks. At any 
rate, that is how they went, and they arrived safely 
at Waterloo in time to catch the 9.15 train for Isle- 
worth. Mr. Salaman saw his partner established in 
an empty first-class compartment and stayed with 
him, chatting, until the train started. 

“Mr. Montague’s destination was Isleworth, in 
which rather unlikely neighbourhood Mr. Jacob 
Lowenstein, late of Chicago, and now Berkeley 
Square, has a sort of river-side villa with a motor 
boat-house attached. Lowenstein had secured the 
option of purchasing the blue diamond necklace, and 
Montague was taking it down to exhibit it and carry 
out the deal. He was proposing to stay a few days 
with Lowenstein, and then he was proceeding to 
Brussels on one of his periodic tours. But he never 
reached Isleworth. When the train stopped at Brent¬ 
ford, a porter noticed a suit-case on the luggage-rack 
of an apparently empty first-class compartment. He 
immediately entered to take possession of it, and was 
in the act of reaching up to the rack when his foot 
came in contact with something soft under the seat. 


THE BLUE SCARAB 


176 

Considerably startled, he stooped and peered under, 
when, to his horror, he perceived the body of a man, 
quite motionless and apparently dead. Instantly he 
darted out and rushed up the platform in a state of 
wild panic until he, fortunately, ran against the sta¬ 
tion master, with whom and another porter he re¬ 
turned to the compartment. When they drew the 
body out from under the seat it was found to be still 
breathing, and they proceeded at once to apply such 
restoratives as cold water and fresh air, pending the 
arrival of the police and the doctor, who had been 
sent for. 

“In a few minutes the police arrived accompanied 
by the police surgeon, and the latter, after a brief 
examination, decided that the unconscious man was 
suffering from the effects of a large dose of chloro¬ 
form, violently and unskilfully administered, and or¬ 
dered him to be carefully removed to a local nursing 
home. Meanwhile, the police had been able, by in¬ 
specting the contents of his pockets, to identify him 
as Mr. Lionel Montague.” 

“The diamonds had vanished, of course?” said I. 

“Yes. The handbag was not in the compartment, 
and later an empty handbag was picked up on the 
permanent way between Barnes and Chiswick, which 
seems to indicate the locality where the robbery took 
place.” 

“And what is our present objective?” 

“We are going, on instructions from Mr. Salaman, 
to the nursing home to see what information we can 


A FISHER OF MEN 


177 


pick up. If Montague has recovered sufficiently to 
give an account of the robbery, the police will have 
a description of the robber, and there may not be 
much for us to do. But you will have noticed that 
they do not seem to have any information at Scotland 
Yard at present, beyond what I have given you. So 
there is a chance yet that we may earn our fees.” 

Thorndyke’s narrative of this somewhat common¬ 
place crime, with the discussion which followed it, 
occupied us until the train stopped at Brentford Sta¬ 
tion. A few minutes later we halted in one of the 
quiet by-streets of this old-world town, at a soberly 
painted door on which was a brass plate inscribed “St. 
Agnes Nursing Home.” Our arrival had apparently 
been observed, for the door was opened by a middle- 
aged lady in a nurse’s uniform. 

“Dr. Thorndyke?” she inquired; and as my col¬ 
league bowed assent she continued: “Mr. Salaman 
told me you would probably call. I am afraid I 
haven’t very good news for you. The patient is still 
quite unconscious.” 

“That is rather remarkable,” said Thorndyke. 

“It is. Dr. Kingston, who is in charge of the case, 
is somewhat puzzled by this prolonged stupor. He 
is inclined to suspect a narcotic—possibly a large dose 
of morphine—in addition to the effects of the chloro¬ 
form and the shock.” 

“He is probably right,” said I; “and the marvel is 
that the man is alive at all after such outrageous 
treatment.” 


i 7 8 


THE BLUE SCARAB 


“Yes” Thorndyke agreed. “He must be pretty 
tough. Shall we be able to see him.” 

“Oh, yes,” the matron replied. “I am instructed 
to give you every assistance. Dr. Kingston would 
like to have your opinion on the case.” 

With this she conducted us to a pleasant room on 
the first floor where, in a bed placed opposite a large 
window—purposely left uncurtained—with the strong 
light falling full on his face, a man lay with closed 
eyes, breathing quietly and showing no sign of con¬ 
sciousness when we somewhat noisily entered the 
room. For some time Thorndyke stood by the bed¬ 
side, looking down at the unconscious man, listening 
to the breathing and noting its frequency by his watch. 
Then he felt the pulse, and raising both eyelids, com¬ 
pared the two pupils. 

“His condition doesn’t appear alarming,” was his 
conclusion. “The breathing is rather shallow, but it 
is quite regular, and the pulse is not bad though slow. 
The contracted pupils strongly suggest opium, or more 
probably morphine. But that could easily be settled 
by a chemical test. Do you notice the state of the 
face, Jervis?” 

“You mean the chloroform burns? Yes, the hand¬ 
kerchief or pad must have been saturated. But I was 
also noticing that he corresponds quite remarkably 
with the description you were giving Badger of the 
owner of the dressing wallet. He is about the age 
you mentioned—roughly about fifty—and he has the 
same old-fashioned treatment of the beard, the shaven 


A FISHER OF MEN 


179 


upper lip and the monkey-fringe under the chin. It 
is rather an odd coincidence.” 

Thorndyke looked at me keenly. “The coincidence 
is closer than that, Jervis. Look at the beard itself.” 

He handed me his lens, and, stooping down, I 
brought it to bear on the patient’s beard. And then 
I started back in astonishment; for by the bright light 
I could see plainly that a considerable proportion of 
the hairs were distinctly moniliform. This man’s 
beard, too, was affected by an early stage of trichor- 
rexis nodosa! 

“Well!” I exclaimed, “this is really an amazing 
coincidence. I wonder if it is anything more.” 

“I wonder,” said Thorndyke. “Are those Mr. Mon¬ 
tague’s things, Matron?” 

“Yes,” she replied, turning to the side table on 
which the patient’s effects were neatly arranged. 
“Those are his clothes and the things which were 
taken from his pockets, and that is his bag. It was 
found on the line and sent on here a couple of hours 
ago. There is nothing in it.” 

Thorndyke looked over the various objects—keys, 
card-case, pocket-book, etc.—that had been turned 
out of the patient’s pockets, and then picked up the 
bag, which he turned over curiously and then opened 
to inspect the interior. There was nothing distinctive 
about it. It was just a plain, imitation leather bag, 
fairly new, though rather the worse for its late vicis¬ 
situdes, lined with coarse linen to which two large, 
wash-leather pockets had been roughly stitched. As 


180 THE BLUE SCARAB 

he laid the bag down and picked up his own canvas 
case, he asked: “What time did Mr. Salaman come to 
see the patient?” 

“He came here about ten o’clock this morning, and 
he was not able to stay more than half an hour as he 
had an appointment. But he said he would look in 
again this evening. You can’t stay to see him, I sup¬ 
pose?” 

“I’m afraid not,” Thorndyke replied; “in fact, we 
must be off now for both Dr. Jervis and I have some 
other matters to attend to.” 

“Are you going straight back to the chambers, 
Jervis?” Thorndyke asked, as we walked down the 
main street towards the station. 

“Yes,” I replied in some surprise. “Aren’t you?” 

“No. I have a little expedition in view.” 

“Oh, have you?” I exclaimed, and as I spoke it 
began to dawn on me that I had overestimated the 
importance of my other business. 

“Yes,” said Thorndyke; “the fact is that—ha! 
excuse me one moment, Jervis.” He had halted 
abruptly outside a fishing tackle shop and now, after 
a brief glance in through the window, entered with an 
air of business. I immediately bolted in after him, 
and was just in time to hear him demand a fishing 
rod of a light and inexpensive character. When this 
had been supplied he asked for a line and one or two 
hooks; and I was a little surprised—and the vendor 
was positively scandalized—at his indifference to the 
quality or character of these appliances. I believe he 


A FISHER OF MEN 181 

would have accepted cod-line and a shark-hook if they 
had been offered. 

“And now I want a float,” said he. 

The shopkeeper produced a tray containing a varied 
assortment of floats over which Thorndyke ran a 
critical eye, and finally reduced the shopman to 
stupefaction by selecting a gigantic, pot-bellied, 
scarlet-and-green atrocity that looked like a juvenile 
telegraph buoy. 

I could not let this outrage pass without comment. 
“You must excuse me, Thorndyke,” I said, “if I ven¬ 
ture to point out that the Greenland whale no longer 
frequents the upper reaches of the Thames.” 

“You mind your own business,” he retorted, stolidly 
pocketing the telegraph buoy when he had paid for 
his purchases. “I like a float that you can see.” 

Here the shopman, recovering somewhat from the 
shock of surprise, remarked deferentially that it was 
a long time since a really large pike had been caught 
in the neighbourhood; whereupon Thorndyke finished 
him off by replying: “Yes, I J ve no doubt. They 
don’t use the right sort of floats, you know. Now, 
when the pike see my float, they will just come tum¬ 
bling over one another to get on the hook.” With 
this he tucked the rod under his arm and strolled 
out, leaving the shopman breathing hard and staring 
harder. 

“But what on earth,” I asked, as we walked down 
the street (watched by the shopman, who had come 
out on the pavement to see the last of us), “do you 


182 


THE BLUE SCARAB 


want with such an enormous float? Why, it will be 
visible a quarter of a mile away.” 

“Exactly,” said Thorndyke. “And what more could 
a fisher of men require?” 

This rejoinder gave me pause. Evidently Thorn- 
dyke had something in hand of more than common 
interest; and again it occurred to me that my own 
business engagements were of no special urgency. I 
was about to mention this fact when Thorndyke again 
halted—at an oilshop this time. 

“I think I will step in here and get a little burnt 
umber,” said he. 

I followed him into the shop, and while the powder- 
colour was being weighed and made up into a little 
packet I reflected profoundly. Fishing tackle and 
burnt umber had no obvious associations. I began 
to be mystified and correspondingly inquisitive. 

“What do you want the burnt umber for?” I asked 
as soon as we were outside. 

“To mix with plaster,” he replied readily. 

“But why do you want to colour the plaster? And 
what are you going to do with it?” 

“Now, Jervis,” he admonished with mock severity, 
“you are not doing yourself justice. An investigator 
of your experience shouldn’t ask for explanations of 
the obvious.” 

“And why,” I continued, “did you want to know 
if I was going straight back to the chambers?” 

“Because I may want some assistance later. Prob¬ 
ably Polton will be able to do all that I want, but I 


A FISHER OF MEN 183 

wished to know that you would both be within reach 
of a telegram.” 

“But,” I exclaimed, “what nonsense it is to talk of 
sending a telegram to me when I’m here!” 

“But I may not want any assistance, after all.” 

“Well,” I said doggedly, “you are going to have it 
whether you want it or not. You’ve got something 
on and I’m going to be in it.” 

“I like your enthusiasm, Jervis,” he chuckled; “but 
it is quite possible that I shall merely find a mare’s 
nest.” 

“Very well,” said I. “Then I’ll help you to find it. 
I’ve had plenty of experience in that line, to say noth¬ 
ing of my natural gifts. So lead on.” 

He led on, with a resigned smile, to the station, 
where we were fortunate enough to find a train just 
ready to start. But our journey was not a long one, 
for at Chiswick Thorndyke got out of the train, and 
on leaving the station struck out eastward with a very 
evident air of business. As we entered the outskirts 
of Hammersmith he turned into a by-street which 
presently brought us out into Bridge Road. Here he 
turned sharply to the right and, at the same brisk 
pace, crossed Hammersmith Bridge and made his 
way to the towing path. As he now slowed down per¬ 
ceptibly, I ventured to inquire whether this was the 
spot on which he proposed to exhibit his super-float. 

“This, I think, will be our fishing-ground,” he re¬ 
plied; “but we will look over it carefully and select 
a suitable pitch.” 


THE BLUE SCARAB 


184 

He continued to advance at any easy pace, and I 
noticed that, according to his constant habit, he was 
studying the peculiarities of the various feet that had 
trodden the path within the last day or two, Leeping, 
for this purpose, on the right-hand side, where the 
shade of a few pollard willows overhanging an indis¬ 
tinct dry ditch had kept the ground soft. We had 
walked on for nearly half a mile when he halted and 
looked round. 

“I think we had better turn back a little way,” said 
he. “We seem to have overshot our mark.” 

I made no comment on this rather mysterious ob¬ 
servation, and we retraced our steps for a couple of 
hundred yards, Thorndyke still walking on the side 
farthest from the river and still keeping his eyes fixed 
on the ground. Presently he again halted, and look¬ 
ing up and down the path, of which we were at the 
moment the only occupants, placed the canvas case 
on the ground and unfastened its clasps. 

“This, I think, will be our pitch,” said he. 

“What are you going to do?” I asked. 

“I am going to make one or two casts. And mean¬ 
while you had better get the fishing rod fixed together 
so as to divert the attention of any passers by.” 

I proceeded to make ready the fishing tackle, but 
at the same time kept a close watch on my colleague's 
proceedings. And very curious proceedings they were. 
First he dipped up a little water from the river in the 
rubber mixing bowl with which he mixed a bowlful of 
plaster, and into this he stirred a few pinches of burnt 


A FISHER OF MEN 


i 85 

umber, whereby its dazzling white was changed to a 
muddy buff. Then, having looked up and down the 
path, he stooped and carefully poured the plaster into 
a couple of impressions of a walking-stick that were 
visible at the edge of the path and finished up by 
filling a deep impression of the same stick, at the 
margin of the ditch, where it had apparently been 
stuck in the soft, clayey ground. 

As I watched this operation, a sudden suspicion 
flashed into my mind. Dropping the fishing rod, I 
walked quickly along the path until I was able to pick 
up another impression of the stick. A very brief 
examination of it confirmed my suspicion. At the 
centre of the little shallow pit was a semicircular im¬ 
pression—clearly that of a half-worn boot-stud. 

“Why!” I exclaimed, “this is the stick that we saw 
at Scotland Yard!” 

“I should expect it to be and I believe it is,” said 
Thorndyke. “But we shall be better able to judge 
from the casts. Pick up your rod. There are two 
men coming down the path.” 

He closed his “research case” and drawing the 
fishing-line from his pocket, began meditatively to 
unwind it. 

“I could wish,” said I, “that our appearance was 
more in character with the part of the rustic angler; 
and for the Lord’s sake keep that float out of sight, 
or we shall collect a crowd.” 

Thorndyke laughed softly. “The float,” said he, 
“was intended for Polton. He would have loved it. 


i86 


THE BLUE SCARAB 


And the crowd would have been rather an advantage 
—as you will appreciate when you come to use it.” 

The two men—builder’s labourers, apparently— 
now passed us with a glance of faint interest at the 
fishing-tackle; and as they strolled by, I appreciated 
the value of the burnt umber. If the casts had been 
made of the snow-white plaster they would have 
stared conspicuously from the ground and these men 
would almost certainly have stopped to examine them 
and see what we were doing. But the tinted plaster 
was practically invisible. 

“You are a wonderful man, Thorndyke,” I said,*as 
I announced my discovery. “You foresee every¬ 
thing.” 

He bowed his acknowledgments, and having ten¬ 
derly felt one of the casts and ascertained that the 
plaster had set hard, he lifted it with infinite care, 
exhibiting a perfect facsimile of the end of the stick, 
on which the worn boot-stud was plainly visible, even 
to the remains of the pattern. Any doubt that might 
have remained as to the identity of the stick was re¬ 
moved when Thorndyke produced his calliper-gauge. 

“Twenty-three thirty-seconds was the diameter, I 
think,” said he as he opened the jaws of the gauge 
and consulted his notes. He placed the cast between 
the jaws, and as they were gently slid into contact, 
the index marked twenty-three thirty-seconds. 

“Good,” said Thorndyke, picking up the other two 
casts and establishing their identity with the one 
which we had examined. “This completes the first 


A FISHER OF MEN 


187 

act.” Dropping one cast into his case and throwing 
the other two into the river, he continued: “Now we 
proceed to the next and hope for a like success. You 
notice that he stuck his stick into the ground. Why 
do you suppose he did that?” 

“Presumably to leave his hands free.” 

“Yes. And now let us sit down here and consider 
why he wanted his hands free. Just look around and 
tell me what you see.” 

I gazed rather hopelessly at the very undistinctive 
surroundings and began a bald catalogue. “I see a 
shabby-looking pollard willow, an assortment of sub¬ 
urban vegetation, an obsolete tin saucepan—unserv¬ 
iceable—and a bald spot where somebody seems to 
have pulled up a small patch of turf.” 

“Yes,” said Thorndyke. “You will also notice a 
certain amount of dry, powdered earth distributed 
rather evenly over the bottom of the ditch. And your 
patch of turf was cut round with a large knife before 
it was pulled up. Why do you suppose it was pulled 
up?” 

I shook my head. “It’s of no use making mere 
guesses.” 

“Perhaps not,” said he, “though the suggestion is 
fairly obvious when considered with the other appear¬ 
ances. Between the roots of the willow you notice a 
patch of grass that looks denser than one would ex¬ 
pect from its position. I wonder-” 

As he spoke, he reached forward with his stick and 
prized vigorously at the edge of the patch, with the 


i 88 


THE BLUE SCARAB 


result that the clump of grass lifted bodily; and when 
I picked it up and tried it on the bald spot, the nicety 
with which it fitted left no doubt as to its origin. 

“Ha!” I exclaimed, looking at the obviously dis¬ 
turbed earth between the roots of the willow, which 
the little patch of turf had covered; “the plot thickens. 
Something seems to have been either buried or dug 
up there; more probably buried.” 

“I hope and believe that my learned friend is cor¬ 
rect,” said Thorndyke, opening his case to abstract a 
large, powerful spatula. 

“What do you expect to find there?” I asked. 

“I have a faint hope of finding something wrapped 
in the half of a very dirty towel,” was the reply. 

“Then you had better find it quickly,” said I, “for 
there is a man coming along the path from the Putney 
direction.” 

He looked round at the still distant figure, and driv¬ 
ing the spatula into the loose earth stirred it up vig¬ 
orously. 

“I can feel something,” he said, digging away with 
powerful thrusts and scooping the earth out with his 
hands. Once more he looked round at the approach¬ 
ing stranger—who seemed now to have quickened his 
pace but was still four or five hundred yards distant. 
Then, thrusting his hands into the hole, he gave a 
smart pull. Slowly there came forth a package, about 
ten inches by six, enveloped in a portion of a pecul¬ 
iarly filthy towel and loosely secured with string. 
Thorndyke rapidly cast off the string and opened out 


A FISHER OF MEN 189 

the towel, disclosing a handsome morocco case with 
an engraved gold plate. 

I pounced on the case and, pressing the catch, raised 
the lid; and though I had expected no less, it was 
with something like a shock of surprise that I looked 
on the glittering row and the dazzling cluster of 
steely-blue diamonds. 

As I closed the casket and deposited it in the green 
canvas case, Thorndyke, after a single glance at the 
treasure and another along the path, crammed the 
towel into the hole and began to sweep the loose earth 
in on top of it. The approaching stranger was for 
the moment hidden from us by a bend of the path 
and a near clump of bushes, and Thorndyke was evi¬ 
dently working to hide all traces before he should 
appear. Having filled the hole, he carefully replaced 
the sod of turf and then, moving over to the little 
bare patch from whence the turf had been removed, 
he began swiftly to dig it up. 

“There,” said he, flinging on the path a worm 
which he had just disinterred, “that will explain our 
activities. You had better continue the excavation 
with your pocket-knife, and then proceed to the cap¬ 
ture of the leviathans. I must run up to the police 
station and you must keep possession of this pitch. 
Don’t move away from here on any account until I 
come back or send somebody to relieve you. I will 
hand you over the float; you’ll want that.” With a 
malicious smile he dropped the gaudy monstrosity on 
the path and having wiped the spatula and replaced 


THE BLUE SCARAB 


190 

it in the case, picked up the latter and moved away 
towards Putney. 

At this moment the stranger reappeared, walking 
as if for a wager, and I began to peck up the earth 
with my pocket-knife. 

As the man approached he slowed down by degrees 
until he came up at something like a saunter. He 
was followed at a little distance by Thorndyke, who 
had turned as if he had changed his mind, and now 
passed me with the remark that “Perhaps Hammer¬ 
smith would be better.” The stranger cast a suspi¬ 
cious glance at him and then turned his attention to 
me. 

“Lookin’ for worms?” he inquired, halting and sur¬ 
veying me inquisitively. 

I replied by picking one up (with secret distaste) 
and holding it aloft, and he continued, looking wist¬ 
fully at Thorn dyke’s retreating figure: 

“Your pal seems to have had enough.” 

“He hadn’t got a rod,” said I; “but he’ll be back 
presently.” 

“Ah!” said he, looking steadily over my shoulder in 
the direction of the willow. “Well, you won’t do any 
good here. The place where they rises is a quarter 
of a mile farther down—just round the bend there. 
That’s a prime pitch. You just come along with me 
and I’ll show you.” 

“I must stay here until my friend comes back,” said 
I. “But I’ll tell him what you say.” 

With this I seated myself stolidly on the bank and, 


A FISHER OF MEN 


191 

having flung the baited hook into the stream, sat and 
glared fixedly at the preposterous float. My acquaint¬ 
ance fidgeted about me uneasily, endeavouring from 
time to time to lure me away to the “prime pitch” 
round the bend. And so the time dragged on until 
three-quarters of an hour had passed. 

Suddenly I observed two taxicabs crossing the 
bridge, followed by three cyclists. A minute or two 
later Thorndyke reappeared, accompanied by two 
other men, and then the cyclists came into view, ap¬ 
proaching at a rapid pace. 

“Seems to be a regular procession,” my friend re¬ 
marked, viewing the new arrivals with evident uneasi¬ 
ness. As he spoke, one of the cyclists halted and dis¬ 
mounted to examine his tyre, while the other two 
approached and shot past us. Then they, too, halted 
and dismounted, and having deposited their machines 
in the ditch, came back towards us. By this time 
I was able—with a good deal of surprise—to identify 
Thorndyke’s two companions as Inspector Badger 
and Superintendent Miller. Perhaps my acquaintance 
also recognized them, or possibly the proceedings of 
the third cyclist—who had also laid down his machine 
and was approaching on foot—disturbed him. At any 
rate he glanced quickly from the one group to the 
other, and, selecting the smaller one, sprang suddenly 
between the two cyclists and sped away along the path 
like a hare. 

In a moment there was a wild stampede. The three 
cyclists, remounting their machines, pedalled furiously 


THE BLUE SCARAB 


192 

after the fugitive, followed by Badger and Miller on 
foot. Then the fugitive, the cyclists, and finally the 
two officers disappeared round the bend of the path. 

“How did you know that he was the man?'’ I asked, 
when my colleague and I were left alone. 

“I didn’t, though I had pretty strong grounds for 
suspicion. But I merely brought the police to set a 
watch on the place and arrange an ambush. Their 
encircling movement was just an experimental bluff; 
they might have been chary of arresting the fellow if 
he hadn’t taken fright and bolted. We have been 
fortunate all round, for, by a lucky chance, Badger 
and Miller were at Chiswick making enquiries and I 
was able to telephone to them to meet me at the 
bridge.” 

At this moment the procession reappeared, ad¬ 
vancing briskly; and my late adviser marched at the 
centre securely handcuffed. As he was conducted 
past me he glared savagely and made some impolite 
references to a “blooming nark.” 

“You can take him in one of the taxis,” said Miller, 
“and put your bicycles on top.” Then, as the pro¬ 
cession moved on towards the bridge he turned to 
Thorndyke. “I suppose he’s the right man, Doctor, 
but he hasn’t got any of the stuff on him.” 

“Of course he hasn’t,” said Thorndyke. 

“Well, do you know where it is?” 

Thorndyke opened his case and taking out the cas¬ 
ket, handed it to the Superintendent. “I shall want 
a receipt for it,” said he. 


A FISHER OF MEN 


193 


Miller opened the casket, and at the sight of the 
glittering jewels both the detectives uttered an excla¬ 
mation of amazement, and the Superintendent de¬ 
manded: “Where did you get this, sir?” 

“I dug it up at the foot of that willow.” 

“But how did you know it was there?” 

“I didn’t,” replied Thorndyke; “but I thought I 
might as well look, you know,” and he bestowed a 
smile of exasperating blandness on the astonished 
officer. 

The two detectives gazed at Thorndyke, then they 
looked at one another and then they looked at me; 
and Badger observed, with profound conviction, that 
it was a “knock-out.” “I believe the doctor keeps a 
tame clairvoyant,” he added. 

“And may I take it, sir,” said Miller, “that you can 
establish a prima facie case against this man, so that 
we can get a remand until Mr. Montague is well 
enough to identify him?” 

“You may,” Thorndyke replied. “Let me know 
when and where he is to be charged and I will attend 
and give evidence.” 

On this Miller wrote out a receipt for the jewels 
and the two officers hurried off to their taxicab, leav¬ 
ing us, as Badger put it, “to our fishing.” 

As soon as they were out of sight, Thorndyke 
opened his case and mixed another bowlful of plaster. 
“We want two more casts,” said he; “one of the right 
foot of the man who buried the jewels and one of the 
right foot of the prisoner. They are obviously iden- 


THE BLUE SCARAB 


194 

tical, as you can see by the arrangement of the nails 
and the shape of the new patch on the sole. I shall 
put the casts in evidence and compare them with the 
prisoner’s right boot.” 

I understood now why Thorndyke had walked away 
towards Putney and then returned in rear of the 
stranger. He had suspected the man and had wanted 
to get a look at his footprints. But there was a good 
deal in this case that I did not understand at all. 

“There,” said Thorndyke, as he deposited the casts, 
each with its pencilled identification, in his canvas 
case, “that is the end of the Blue Diamond Mys¬ 
tery.” 

“I beg your pardon,” said I, “but it isn’t. I want 
a full explanation. It is evident that from the house 
at Brentford you made a bee line to that willow. You 
knew then pretty exactly where the necklace was hid¬ 
den. For all I know, you may have had that knowl¬ 
edge when we left Scotland Yard.” 

“As a matter of fact, I had,” he replied. “I went 
to Brentford principally to verify the ownership of 
the wallet and the bag.” 

“But what was it that directed you with such cer¬ 
tainty to the Hammersmith towing-path?” 

It was then that he made the observation that I 
have quoted at the beginning of this narrative. 

“In this case,” he continued, “a curious fact, well 
known to naturalists, acquired vital evidential impor¬ 
tance. It associated a bag, found in one locality, with 


A FISHER OF MEN 


195 


another apparently unrelated locality. It was the link 
that joined up the two ends of a broken chain. I 
offered that fact to Inspector Badger, who, lacking the 
knowledge wherewith to interpret it, rejected it with 
scorn.” 

“I remember that you gave him the name of that 
little shell that dropped out of the handful of grass.” 

“Exactly,” said Thorndyke. “That was the crucial 
fact. It told us where the handful of grass had been 
gathered.” 

“I can’t imagine how,” said I. “Surely you find 
shells all over the country?” 

“That is, in general, quite true ” he replied, “but 
Clausilia biplicata is one of the rare exceptions. 
There are four British species of these queer little 
univalves (which are so named from the little spring 
door with which the entrance of the shell is fur¬ 
nished) ; Clausilia laminata f Rolphii, rugosa and bip¬ 
licata. The first three species have what we may call 
a normal distribution, whereas the distribution of 
biplicata is abnormal. This seems to be a dying 
species. It is in process of becoming extinct in this 
island. But when a species of animal or plant be¬ 
comes extinct, it does not fade away evenly over the 
whole of its habitat , but it disappears in patches, 
which gradually extend, leaving, as it were, islands of 
survival. This is what has happened to Clausilia 
biplicata. It has disappeared from this country with 
the exception of two localities; one of these is in Wilt¬ 
shire, and the other is the right bank of the Thames 


THE BLUE SCARAB 


196 

at Hammersmith. And this latter locality is extraor¬ 
dinarily restricted. Walk down a few hundred yards 
towards Putney, and you have walked out of its do¬ 
main; walk up a few hundred yards towards the 
bridge, and again you have walked out of its territory. 
Yet within that little area it is fairly plentiful. If you 
know where to look—it lives on the bark or at the 
roots of willow trees—you can usually find one or 
two specimens. Thus, you see, the presence of that 
shell associated the handful of grass with a certain 
willow tree, and that willow was either in Wiltshire 
or by the Hammersmith towing-path. But there was 
nothing otherwise to connect it with Wiltshire, whereas 
there was something to connect it with Hammersmith. 
Let us for a moment dismiss the shell and consider 
the other suggestions offered by the bag and stick. 

“The bag, as you saw, contained traces of two very 
different persons. One was apparently a middle-class 
man, probably middle-aged or elderly, cleanly, careful 
as to his appearance and of orderly habits; the other, 
uncleanly, slovenly and apparently a professional 
criminal. The bag itself seemed to appertain to the 
former person. It was an expensive bag and showed 
signs of years of careful use. This, and the circum¬ 
stances in which it was found, led us to suspect that 
it was a stolen bag. Now, we knew that the contents 
of a bag had been stolen. We knew that an empty 
bag had been picked up on the line between Barnes 
and Chiswick, and it was probable that the thief had 
left the train at the latter station. The empty bag 


A FISHER OF MEN 


197 


had been assumed to be Mr. Montague’s, whereas the 
probabilities—as, for instance, the fact of its having 
been thrown out on the line—suggested that it was 
the thief’s bag, and that Mr. Montague’s had been 
taken away with its contents. 

“The point, then, that we had to settle when we 
left Scotland Yard, was whether this apparently 
stolen bag had any connection with the train robbery. 
But as soon as we saw Mr. Montague it was evident 
that he corresponded exactly with the owner of the 
dressing-wallet; and when we saw the bag that had 
been found on the line—a shoddy, imitation leather 
bag—it was practically certain that it was not his, 
while the roughly-stitched leather pockets exactly 
suited to the dimensions of house-breaking tools, 
strongly suggested that it was a burglar’s bag. But 
if this were so, then Mr. Montague’s bag had been 
stolen, and the robber’s effects stuffed into it. 

“With this working hypothesis we were now able 
to take up the case from the other end. The Scot¬ 
land Yard bag was Montague’s bag. It had been 
taken from Chiswick to the Hammersmith towpath, 
where—judging from the clay smears on the bottom 
—it had been laid on the ground, presumably close to 
a willow tree. The use of the grass as packing sug¬ 
gested that something had been removed from the 
bag at this place—something that had wedged the 
tools together and prevented them from rattling; and 
there appeared to be half a towel missing. Clearly, 
the towpath was our next field of exploration. 


THE BLUE SCARAB 


198 

“But, small as this area was geographically, it 
would have taken a long time to examine in detail. 
Here, however, the stick gave us invaluable aid. It 
had a perfectly distinctive tip, and it showed traces 
of having been stuck about three inches into earth 
similar to that on the bag. What we had thus to 
look for was a hole in the ground about three inches 
deep, and having at the bottom the impression of a 
half-worn boot-stud. This hole would probably be 
close to a willow. 

“The search turned out even easier than I had 
hoped. Directly we reached the towpath I picked up 
the track of the stick, and not one track only, but a 
double track, showing that our friend had returned 
to the bridge. All that remained was to follow the 
track until it came to an end and there we were pretty 
certain to find the hole in the ground, as, in fact, we 
did.” 

“And why,” I asked, “do you suppose he buried the 
stuff?” 

“Probably as a precaution, in case he had been seen 
and described. This morning’s papers will have told 
him that he had not been. Probably, also, he wanted 
to make arrangements with a fence and didn’t want 
to have the booty about him.” 

There is little more to tell. When the case was 
heard on the following morning, Thorndyke’s uncan¬ 
nily precise and detailed description of the course of 
events, coupled with the production of the stolen prop- 




A FISHER OF MEN 199 

erty, so unnerved the prisoner that he pleaded guilty 
forthwith. 

As to Mr. Montague, he recovered completely in a 
few days, and a handsome pair of Georgian silver can¬ 
dlesticks may even to this day be seen on our mantel¬ 
piece testifying to his gratitude and appreciation of 
Thorndyke’s brilliant conduct of the case. 


VI 

THE STOLEN INGOTS 


“TN medico-legal practice,” Thorndyke remarked, 
I “one must be constantly on one’s guard against 
the effects of suggestion, whether intentional or 
unconscious. When the facts of a case are set forth 
by an informant, they are nearly always presented, 
consciously or unconsciously, in terms of inference. 
Certain facts, which appear to the narrator to be the 
leading facts, are given with emphasis and in detail, 
while other facts, which appear to be subordinate or 
trivial, are partially suppressed. But this assessment 
of evidential value must never be accepted. The 
whole case must be considered and each fact weighed 
separately, and then it will commonly happen that the 
leading fact turns out to be the one that had been 
passed over as negligible.” 

The remark was made apropos of a case, the facts 
of which had just been stated to us by Mr. Hale- 
thorpe, of the Sphinx Assurance Company. I did not 
quite perceive its bearing at the time, but looking 
back when the case was concluded, I realized that I 
had fallen into the very error against which Thorn- 
dyke’s warning should have guarded me. 

“I trust,” said Mr. Halethorpe, “that I have not 
200 


THE STOLEN INGOTS 


201 


come at an inconvenient time. You are so tolerant 
of unusual hours-” 

“My practice/’ interrupted Thorndyke, “is my 
recreation, and I welcome you as one who comes to 
furnish entertainment. Draw your chair up to the 
fire, light a cigar and tell us your story.” 

Mr. Halethorpe laughed, but adopted the procedure 
suggested, and having settled his toes upon the kerb 
and selected a cigar from the box, he opened the sub¬ 
ject of his call. 

“I don’t quite know what you can do for us,” he 
began, “as it is hardly your business to trace lost 
property, but I thought I would come and let you 
know about our difficulty. The fact is that our com¬ 
pany looks like dropping some four thousand pounds, 
which the directors won’t like. What has happened 
is this: 

“About two months ago the London House of the 
Akropong Gold Fields Company applied to us to in¬ 
sure a parcel of gold bars that were to be consigned 
to Minton and Borwell, the big manufacturing jewel¬ 
lers. The bars were to be shipped at Accra and 
landed at Bellhaven, which is the nearest port to 
Minton and Borwell’s works. Well, we agreed to 
underwrite the risk—we have done business with the 
Akropong people before—and the matter was settled. 
The bars were put on board the Labadi at Accra, and 
in due course were landed at Bellhaven, where they 
were delivered to Minton’s agents. So far, so good. 
Then came the catastrophe. The case of bars was 



202 


THE BLUE SCARAB 


put on the train at Bellhaven, consigned to Anchester, 
where Mintons have their factory. But the line 
doesn’t go to Anchester direct. The junction is at 
Garbridge, a small country station close to the river 
Crouch, and here the case was put out and locked up 
in the station-master’s office to wait for the Anchester 
train. It seems that the station-master was called 
away and detained longer than he had expected, and 
when the train was signalled he hurried back in a 
mighty twitter. However, the case was there all 
right, and he personally superintended its removal to 
the guard’s van and put it in the guard’s charge. All 
went well for the rest of the journey. A member of 
the firm was waiting at Anchester station with a 
closed van. The case was put into it and taken direct 
to the factory, where it was opened in the private 
office—and found to be full of lead pipe.” 

“I presume,” said Thorndyke, “that it was not the 
original case.” 

“No,” replied Halethorpe, “but it was a very fair 
imitation. The label and the marks were correct, but 
the seals were just plain wax. Evidently the exchange 
had been made in the station-master’s office, and it 
transpires that although the door was securely locked, 
there was an unfastened window which opened on to 
the garden, and there were plain marks of feet on the 
flower-bed outside.” 

“What time did this happen?” asked Thorndyke. 

“The Anchester train came in at a quarter past 
seven, by which time, of course, it was quite dark.” 


THE STOLEN INGOTS 


203 


“And when did it happen?” 

“The day before yesterday. We heard of it yester¬ 
day morning.” 

“Are you contesting the claim?” 

“We don’t want to. Of course, we could plead neg¬ 
ligence, but in that case I think we should make a 
claim on the railway company. But, naturally, we 
should much rather recover the property. After all, 
it can’t be so very far away.” 

“I wouldn’t say that,” said Thorndyke. “This was 
no impromptu theft. The dummy case was prepared 
in advance, and evidently by somebody who knew 
what the real case was like, and how and when it was 
to be despatched from Bellhaven. We must assume 
that the disposal of the stolen case has been provided 
for with similar completeness. How far is Garbridge 
from the river?” 

“Less than half a mile across the marshes. The 
detective-inspector—Badger, I think you know him 
asked the same question.” 

“Naturally,” said Thorndyke. “A heavy object like 
this case is much more easily and inconspicuously 
conveyed by water than on land. And then, see what 
facilities for concealment a navigable river offers. 
The case could be easily stowed away on a small craft, 
or even in a boat; or the bars could be taken out 
and stowed amongst the ballast, or even, at a pinch, 
dropped overboard at a marked spot and left until 
the hue and cry was over.” 

“You are not very encouraging,” Halethorpe re- 


204 THE BLUE SCARAB 

marked gloomily. “I take it that you don’t much * 
expect that we shall recover those bars.” 

“We needn’t despair,” was the reply, “but I want 
you to understand the difficulties. The thieves have 
got away with the booty, and that booty is an im¬ 
perishable material which retains its value even if 
broken up into unrecognizable fragments. Melted 
down into small ingots, it would be impossible to 
identify.” 

“Well,” said Halethorpe, “the police have the mat¬ 
ter in hand—Inspector Badger, of the C.I.D., is in 
charge of the case—but our directors would be more 
satisfied if you would look into it. Of course we 
would give you any help we could. What do you 
say?” 

“I am willing to look into the case,” said Thorn- 
dyke, “though I don’t hold out much hope. Could 
you give me a note to the shipping company and an¬ 
other to the consignees, Minton and Borwell?” 

“Of course I will. I’ll write them now. I have 
some of our stationery in my attache case. But, if 
you will pardon my saying so, you seem to be start¬ 
ing your inquiry just where there is nothing to be 
learned. The case was stolen after it left the ship 
and before it reached the consignees—although their 
agent had received it from the ship.” 

“The point is,” said Thorndyke, “that this was a 
preconcerted robbery, and that the thieves possessed 
special information. That information must have 
come either from the ship or from the factory. So, 


THE STOLEN INGOTS 


205 


while we must try to pick up the track of the case 
itself, we must seek the beginning of the clue at the 
two ends—the ship and the factory—from one of 
which it must have started.” 

“Yes, that’s true,” said Halethorpe. “Well, I’ll 
write those two notes and then I must run away; and 
we’ll hope for the best.” 

He wrote the two letters, asking for facilities from 
the respective parties, and then took his departure in 
a somewhat chastened frame of mind. 

“Quite an interesting little problem,” Thorndyke 
remarked, as Halethorpe’s footsteps died away on the 
stairs, “but not much in our line. It is really a police 
case—a case for patient and intelligent inquiry. And 
that is what we shall have to do—make some careful 
inquiries on the spot.” 

“Where do you propose to begin?” I asked. 

“At the beginning,” he replied. “Bellhaven. I 
propose that we go down there to-morrow morning 
and pick up the thread at that end.” 

“What thread?” I demanded. “We know that the 
package started from there. What else do you ex¬ 
pect to learn?” 

“There are several curious possibilities in this case, 
as you must have noticed,” he replied. “The ques¬ 
tion is, whether any of them are probabilities. That 
is what I want to settle before we begin a detailed 
investigation.” 

“For my part,” said I, “I should have supposed 
that the investigation would start from the scene of 


206 


THE BLUE SCARAB 


the robbery. But I presume that you have seen some 
possibilities that I have overlooked.” 

Which eventually turned out to be the case. 

“I think,” said Thorndyke as we alighted at Bell- 
haven on the following morning, “we had better go 
first to the Customs and make quite certain, if we can, 
that the bars were really in the case when it was de¬ 
livered to the consignees’ agents. It won’t do to take 
it for granted that the substitution took place at Gar- 
bridge, although that is by far the most probable 
theory.” Accordingly we made our way to the har¬ 
bour, where an obliging mariner directed us to our 
destination. 

At the Custom House we were received by a genial 
officer, who, when Thorndyke had explained his con¬ 
nection with the robbery, entered into the matter with 
complete sympathy and a quick grasp of the situa¬ 
tion. 

“I see,” said he. “You want clear evidence that 
the bars were in the case when it left here. Well, I 
think we can satisfy you on that point. Bullion is 
not a customable commodity, but it has to be exam¬ 
ined and reported. If it is consigned to the Bank of 
England or the Mint, the case is passed through with 
the seals unbroken, but as this was a private consign¬ 
ment, the seals will have been broken and the con¬ 
tents of the case examined. Jeffson, show these gen¬ 
tlemen the report on the case of gold bars from the 
Labadi.” 


THE STOLEN INGOTS 


207 


“Would it be possible,” Thorndyke asked, “for us 
to have a few words with the officer who opened the 
case? You know the legal partiality for personal tes¬ 
timony.” 

“Of course it would. Jeffson, when these gentle¬ 
men have seen the report, find the officer who signed 
it and let them have a talk with him.” 

We followed Mr. Jeffson into an adjoining office 
where he produced the report and handed it to Thorn- 
dyke. The particulars that it gave were in effect 
those that would be furnished by the ship’s manifest 
and the bill of lading. The case was thirteen inches 
long by twelve wide and nine inches deep, outside 
measurement; and its gross weight was one hundred 
and seventeen pounds three ounces, and it contained 
four bars of the aggregate weight of one hundred and 
thirteen pounds two ounces. 

“Thank you,” said Thorndyke, handing back the 
report. “And now can we see the officer—Mr. Byrne, 
I think—just to fill in the details?” 

“If you will come with me,” replied Mr. Jeffson, 
“I’ll find him for you. I expect he is on the wharf.” 

We followed our conductor out on to the quay 
among a litter of cases, crates and barrels, and even¬ 
tually, amidst a battalion of Madeira wine casks, 
found the officer deep in problems of “content and 
ullage,” and other customs mysteries. As Jeffson in¬ 
troduced us, and then discreetly retired, Mr. Byrne 
confronted us with a mahogany face and a truculent 
blue eye. 


208 


THE BLUE SCARAB 


“With reference to this bullion,” said Thorndyke, 
“I understand that you weighed the bars separately 
from the case?” 

“Oi did,” replied Mr. Byrne. 

“Did you weigh each bar separately?” 

“Oi did not,” was the concise reply. 

“What was the appearance of the bars—I mean as 
to shape and size? Were they of the usual type?” 

“Oi’ve not had a great deal to do with bullion,” said 
Mr. Byrne, “but Oi should say that they were just 
ordinary gold bars, about nine inches long by four 
wide and about two inches deep.” 

“Was there much packing material in the case?” 

“Very little. The bars were wrapped in thick 
canvas and jammed into the case. There wouldn’t 
be more than about half an inch clearance all round 
to allow for the canvas. The case was inch and a half 
stuff strengthened with iron bands.” 

“Did you seal the case after you had closed it up?” 

“Oi did. ’Twas all shipshape when it was passed 
back to the mate. And Oi saw him hand it over to 
the consignees’ agents; so ’twas all in order when it 
left the wharf.” 

“That was what I wanted to make sure of,” said 
Thorndyke; and, having pocketed his notebook and 
thanked the officer, he turned away among the wilder¬ 
ness of merchandise. 

“So much for the Customs,” said he. “I am glad 
we went there first. As you have no doubt observed, 
we have picked up some useful information.” 


THE STOLEN INGOTS 


209 


“We have ascertained,” I replied, “that the case 
was intact when it was handed over to the consignees’ 
agents, so that our investigations at Garbridge will 
start from a solid basis. And that, I take it, is all 
you wanted to know.” 

“Not quite all,” he rejoined. “There are one or 
two little details that I should like to fill in. I think 
we will look in on the shipping agents and present 
Halethorpe’s note. We may as well learn all we can 
before we make our start from the scene of the rob¬ 
bery.” 

“Well,” I said. “I don’t see what more there is to 
learn here. But apparently you do. That seems to 
be the office, past those sheds.” 

The manager of the shipping agent’s office looked 
us up and down as he sat at his littered desk with 
Halethorpe’s letter in his hand. 

“You’ve come about that bullion that was stolen,” 
he said brusquely. “Well, it wasn’t stolen here. 
Hadn’t you better inquire at Garbridge, where it 
was?” 

“Undoubtedly,” replied Thorndyke. “But I am 
making certain preliminary inquiries. Now, first, as 
to the bill of lading. Who has that—the original, I 
mean?” 

“The captain has it at present, but I have a 
copy.” 

“Could I see it?” Thorndyke asked. 

The manager raised his eyebrows protestingly, but 
produced the document from a file and handed it to 


210 


THE BLUE SCARAB 


Thorndyke, watching him inquisitively as he copied 
the particulars of the package into his notebook. 

“I suppose,” said Thorndyke as he returned the 
document, “y° u have a copy of the ship’s manifest?” 

“Yes,” replied the manager, “but the entry in the 
manifest is merely a copy of the particulars given in 
the bill of lading.” 

“I should like to see the manifest, if it is not trou¬ 
bling you too much.” 

“But,” the other protested impatiently, “the mani¬ 
fest contains no information respecting this parcel of 
bullion excepting the one entry, which, as I have told 
you, has been copied from the bill of lading.” 

“I realize that,” said Thorndyke; “but I should like 
to look over it, all the same.” 

Our friend bounced into an inner office and pres¬ 
ently returned with a voluminous document, which he 
slapped down on a side-table. 

“There, sir,” he said. “That is the manifest. This 
is the entry relating to the bullion that you are en¬ 
quiring about. The rest of the document is concerned 
with the cargo, in which I presume you are not in¬ 
terested.” 

In this, however, he was mistaken; for Thorndyke, 
having verified the bullion entry, turned the leaves 
over and began systematically, though rapidly, to run 
his eye over the long list from the beginning, a pro¬ 
ceeding that the manager viewed with frenzied im¬ 
patience. 

“If you are going to read it right through, sir,” the 


THE STOLEN INGOTS 


211 


latter observed, “I shall ask you to excuse me. Art 
is long but life is short,” he added with a sour smile. 

Nevertheless he hovered about uneasily, and when 
Thorndyke proceeded to copy some of the entries into 
his notebook, he craned over and read them without 
the least disguise, though not without comment. 

“Good God, sir!” he exclaimed. “What possible 
bearing on this robbery can that parcel of scrivelloes 
have? And do you realize that they are still in the 
ship’s hold?” 

“I inferred that they were, as they are consigned 
to London,” Thorndyke replied, drawing his finger 
down the “description” column and rapidly scanning 
the entries in it. The manager watched that finger, 
and as it stopped successively at a bag of gum copal, 
a case of quartz specimens, a case of six-inch brass 
screw-bolts, a bag of beni-seed and a package of kola 
nuts, he breathed hard and muttered like an angry 
parrot. But Thorndyke was quite unmoved. With 
calm deliberation he copied out each entry, con¬ 
scientiously noting the marks, descriptions of pack¬ 
ages and contents, gross and net weight, dimensions, 
names of consignors and consignees, ports of ship¬ 
ment and discharge, and, in fact, the entire particu¬ 
lars. It was certainly an amazing proceeding, and I 
could make no more of it than could our impatient 
friend. 

At last Thorndyke closed and pocketed his note¬ 
book, and the manager heaved a slightly obtrusive 
sigh. “Is there nothing more, sir?” he asked. “You 


212 


THE BLUE SCARAB 


don’t want to examine the ship, for instance?” The 
next moment, I think, he regretted his sarcasm, for 
Thorndyke inquired with evident interest: “Is the ship 
still here?” 

“Yes,” was the unwilling admission. “She finishes 
unloading here at midday to-day and will probably 
haul into the London Docks to-morrow morning.” 

“I don’t think I need go on board,” said Thorn- 
dyke, “but you might give me a card in case I find 
that I want to.” 

The card was somewhat grudgingly produced, and 
when Thorndyke had thanked our entertainer for his 
help, we took our leave and made our way towards 
the station. 

“Well,” I said, “you have collected a vast amount 
of curious information, but I am hanged if I can see 
that any of it has the slightest bearing on our in¬ 
quiry.” 

Thorndyke cast on me a look of deep reproach. 
“Jervis!” he exclaimed, “you astonish me; you do, 
indeed. Why, my dear fellow, it stares you in the 
face!” 

“When you say fit,’ ” I said a little irritably, “you 
mean-?” 

“I mean the leading fact from which we ljiay deduce 
the modus operandi of this robbery. You shall look 
over my notes in the train and sort out the data that 
we have collected. I think you will find them ex¬ 
tremely illuminating.” 

“I doubt it,” said I. “But, meanwhile, aren’t we 


THE STOLEN INGOTS 


213 


wasting a good deal of time? Halethorpe wants to 
get the gold back; he doesn’t want to know how the 
thieves contrived to steal it.” 

“That is a very just remark,” answered Thorndyke. 
“My learned friend displays his customary robust 
common sense. Nevertheless, I think that a clear 
understanding of the mechanism of this robbery will 
prove very helpful to us, though I agree with you that 
we have spent enough time on securing our prelimi¬ 
nary data. The important thing now is to pick up a 
trail from Garbridge. But I see our train is signalled. 
We had better hurry.” 

As the train rumbled into the station, we looked 
out for an empty smoking compartment, and having 
been fortunate enough to secure one, we settled our¬ 
selves in opposite corners and lighted our pipes. Then 
Thorndyke handed me his notebook and as I studied, 
with wrinkled brows, the apparently disconnected 
entries, he sat and observed me thoughtfully and with 
the faintest suspicion of a smile. Again and again 
I read through those notes with ever-dwindling hopes 
of extracting the meaning that “stared me in the 
face.” Vainly did I endeavour to connect gum copal, 
scrivelloes or beni-seed with the methods of the un¬ 
known robbers. The entries in the notebook persisted 
obstinately in remaining totally disconnected and 
hopelessly irrelevant. At last I shut the book with 
a savage snap and handed it back to its owner. 

“It’s no use, Thorndyke,” I said. “I can’t see the 
faintest glimmer of light.” 


214 


THE BLUE SCARAB 


“Well,” said he, “it isn’t of much consequence. The 
practical part of our task is before us, and it may turn 
out a pretty difficult part. But we have got to recover 
those bars if it is humanly possible. And here we are 
at our jumping-off place. This is Garbridge Station 
—and I see an old acquaintance of ours on the plat¬ 
form.” 

I looked out, as the train slowed down, and there, 
sure enough, was no less a person than Inspector 
Badger of the Criminal Investigation Department. 

“We could have done very well without Badger,” I 
remarked. 

“Yes,” Thorndyke agreed, “but we shall have to 
take him into partnership, I expect. After all, we are 
on his territory and on the same errand. How do you 
do, Inspector?” he continued, as the officer, having 
observed our descent from the carriage, hurried for¬ 
ward with unwonted cordiality. 

“I rather expected to see you here, sir,” said he. 
“We heard that Mr. Halethorpe had consulted you. 
But this isn’t the London train.” 

“No,” said Thorndyke. “We’ve been to Bellhaven, 
just to make sure that the bullion was in the case 
when it started.” 

“I could have told you that two days ago,” said 
Badger. “We got on to the Customs people at once. 
That was all plain sailing; but the rest of it isn’t.” 

“No clue as to how the case was taken away?” 

“Oh, yes; that is pretty clear. It was hoisted out, 
and the dummy hoisted in, through the window of 


THE STOLEN INGOTS 


215 


the station-master’s office. And the same night, two 
men were seen carrying a heavy package, about the 
size of the bullion-case, towards the marshes. But 
there the clue ends. The stuff seems to have vanished 
into thin air. Of course our people are on the look¬ 
out for it in various likely directions, but I am staying 
here with a couple of plain-clothes men. I’ve a con¬ 
viction that it is still somewhere in this neighbour^ 
hood, and I mean to stick here in the hope that I may 
spot somebody trying to move it.” 

As the inspector was speaking we had been walking 
slowly from the station towards the village, which was 
on the opposite side of the river. On the bridge 
Thorndyke halted and looked down the river and 
over the wide expanse of marshy country. 

“This is an ideal place for a bullion robbery,” he 
remarked. “A tidal river near to the sea and a net¬ 
work of creeks, in any one of which one could hide 
a boat or sink the booty below tide-marks. Have you 
heard of any strange craft having put in here?” 

“Yes. There’s a little ramshackle bawley from 
Leigh—but her crew of two ragamuffins are not Leigh 
men. And they’ve made a mess of their visit—got 
their craft on the mud on the top of the spring tide. 
There she is, on that spit; and there she’ll be till next 
spring tide. But I’ve been over her carefully and I’ll 
swear the stuff isn’t aboard her. I had all the ballast 
out and emptied the lazarette and the chain locker.” 

“And what about the barge?” 

“She’s a regular trader here. Her crew—the skip- 


2 l 6 


THE BLUE SCARAB 


per and his son—are quite respectable men and they 
belong here. There they go in that boat; I expect 
they are off on this tide. But they seem to be making 
for the bawley.” 

As he spoke the inspector produced a pair of 
glasses, through which he watched the movements of 
the barge’s jolly-boat, and a couple of elderly fisher¬ 
men, who were crossing the bridge, halted to look on. 
The barge’s boat ran alongside the stranded bawley, 
and one of the rowers hailed; whereupon two men 
tumbled up from the cabin and dropped into the boat, 
which immediately pushed off and headed for the 
barge. 

“Them bawley blokes seems to be taking a pas¬ 
sage along of old Bill Somers,” one of the fisher¬ 
men remarked, levelling a small telescope at the barge 
as the boat drew alongside and the four men climbed 
on board. “Going to work their passage, too,” he 
added as the two passengers proceeded immediately 
to man the windlass while the crew let go the brails 
and hooked the main-sheet block to the traveller. 

“Rum go,” commented Badger, glaring at the barge 
through his glasses; “but they haven’t taken anything 
aboard with them. I could see that.” 

“You have overhauled the barge, I suppose?” said 
Thorndyke. 

“Yes. Went right through her. Nothing there. 
She’s light. There was no place aboard her where 
you could hide a split-pea.” 


THE STOLEN INGOTS 


217 


“Did you get her anchor up?” 

“No,” replied Badger. “I didn’t. I suppose I 
ought to have done so. However, they’re getting it 
up themselves now.” As he spoke, the rapid clink of 
a windlass-pawl was borne across the water, and 
through my prismatic glasses I could see the two pas¬ 
sengers working for all they were worth at the cranks. 
Presently the clink of the pawl began to slow down 
somewhat and the two bargemen, having got the sails 
set, joined the toilers at the windlass, but even then 
there was no great increase of speed. 

“Anchor seems to come up uncommon heavy,” one 
of the fishermen remarked. 

“Aye,” the other agreed. “Got foul of an old 
mooring maybe.” 

“Look out for the anchor, Badger,” Thorndyke said 
in a low voice, gazing steadily through his binocular. 
“It is out of the ground. The cable is up and down 
and the barge is drifting off on the tide.” 

Even as he spoke the ring and stock of the anchor 
rose slowly out of the water, and now I could see that 
a second chain was shackled loosely to the cable, down 
which it had slid until it was stopped by the ring of 
the anchor. Badger had evidently seen it too, for 
he ejaculated, “Hallo!” and added a few verbal 
flourishes which I need not repeat. A few more turns 
of the windlass brought the flukes of the anchor clear 
of the water, and dangling against them was an un¬ 
deniable wooden case, securely slung with lashings of 


2l8 


THE BLUE SCARAB 


stout chain. Badger cursed volubly, and, turning to 
the fishermen, exclaimed in a rather offensively per¬ 
emptory tone: 

“I want a boat. Now. This instant.” 

The elder piscator regarded him doggedly and re¬ 
plied: “All right. I ain’t got no objection.” 

“Where can I get a boat?” the inspector demanded, 
nearly purple with excitement and anxiety. 

“Where do you think?” the mariner responded, 
evidently nettled by the inspector’s masterful tone. 
“Pastrycook’s? Or livery stables?” 

“Look here,” said Badger. “I’m a police officer and 
I want to board that barge, and I am prepared to pay 
handsomely. Now where can I get a boat?” 

“We’ll put you aboard of her,” replied the fisher¬ 
man, “that is, if we can catch her. But I doubt it. 
She’s off, that’s what she is. And there’s something 
queer agoing on aboard of her,” he added in a some¬ 
what different tone. 

There was. I had been observing it. The case had 
been, with some difficulty, hoisted on board, and then 
suddenly there had broken out an altercation between 
the two bargees and their passengers, and this had 
now developed into what looked like a free fight. It 
was difficult to see exactly what was happening, for 
the barge was drifting rapidly down the river, and her 
sails, blowing out first on one side and then on the 
other, rather obscured the view. Presently, however, 
the sails filled and a man appeared at the wheel; then 
the barge jibed round, and with a strong ebb tide and 


THE STOLEN INGOTS 219 

a fresh breeze, very soon began to grow small in the 
distance. 

Meanwhile the fishermen had bustled off in search 
of a boat, and the inspector had raced to the bridge¬ 
head, where he stood gesticulating frantically and 
blowing his whistle, while Thorndyke continued plac¬ 
idly to watch the receding barge through his binocu¬ 
lar. 

“What are we going to do?” I asked, a little sur¬ 
prised at my colleague’s inaction. 

“What can we do?” he asked in reply. “Badger 
will follow the barge. He probably won’t overtake 
her, but he will prevent her from making a landing 
until they get out into the estuary, and then he may 
possibly get assistance. The chase is in his hands.” 

“Are we going with him?” 

“I am not. This looks like being an all-night ex¬ 
pedition, and I must be at our chambers to-morrow 
morning. Besides, the chase is not our affair. But 
if you would like to join Badger there is no reason 
why you shouldn’t. I can look after the practice.” 

“Well,” I said, “I think I should rather like to be 
in at the death, if it won’t inconvenience you. But 
it is possible that they may get away with the 
booty.” 

“Quite,” he agreed; “and then it would be useful 
to know exactly how and where it disappears. Yes, 
go with them, by all means, and keep a sharp look¬ 
out.” 

At this moment Badger returned with the two plain- 


220 


THE BLUE SCARAB 


clothes men whom his whistle had called from their 
posts, and simultaneously a boat was seen approach¬ 
ing the steps by the bridge, rowed by the two fisher¬ 
men. The inspector looked at us inquiringly. “Are 
you coming to see the sport?” he asked. 

a Doctor Jervis would like to come with you,” 
Thorndyke replied. “I have to get back to London. 
But you will be a fair boat-load without me.” 

This appeared to be also the view of the two fish¬ 
ermen, as they brought up at the steps and observed 
the four passengers; but they made no demur beyond 
inquiring if there were not any more; and when we 
had taken our places in the stern sheets, they pushed 
off and pulled through the bridge and away down 
stream. Gradually, the village receded and the 
houses and the bridge grew small and more distant, 
though they remained visible for a long time over the 
marshy levels; and still, as I looked back through my 
glasses, I could see Thorndyke on the bridge, watch¬ 
ing the pursuit with his binocular to his eyes. 

Meanwhile the fugitive barge, having got some two 
miles start, seemed to be drawing ahead. But it was 
only at intervals that we could see her, for the tide 
was falling fast and we were mostly hemmed in by 
the high, muddy banks. Only when we entered a 
straight reach of the river could we see her sails over 
the land; and every time that she came into view, 
she appeared perceptibly smaller. 

When the river grew wider, the mast was stepped 
and a good-sized lug-sail hoisted, though one of the 


THE STOLEN INGOTS 


221 


fishermen continued to ply his oar on the weather side, 
while the other took the tiller. This improved our 
pace appreciably; but still, whenever we caught a 
glimpse of the barge, it was evident that she was 
still gaining. 

On one of these occasions the man at the tiller, 
standing up to get a better view, surveyed our quarry 
intently for nearly a minute and then addressed the 
inspector. 

“She’s a-going to give us the go-by, mister,” he ob¬ 
served with conviction. 

“Still gaining?” asked Badger. 

“Aye. She’s a-going to slip across the tail of Foul¬ 
ness Sand into the deep channel. And that’s the last 
we shall see of her.” 

“But can’t we get into the channel the same way?” 
demanded Badger. 

“Well, d’ye see,” replied the fisherman, “ ’tis like 
this. Tide’s a-running out, but there’ll be enough for 
her. It’ll just carry her out through the Whitaker 
Channel and across the spit. Then it’ll turn, and up 
she’ll go, London way, on the flood. But we shall 
catch the flood-tide in the Whitaker Channel, and a 
rare old job we’ll have to get out; and when we do 
get out, that barge’ll be miles away.” 

The inspector swore long and earnestly. He even 
alluded to himself as a “blithering idiot.” But that 
helped matters not at all. The fisherman’s dismal 
prophecy was fulfilled in every horrid detail. When 
we were approaching the Whitaker Channel the barge 


222 


THE BLUE SCARAB 


was just crossing the spit, and the last of the ebb-tide 
was trickling out. By the time we were fairly in the 
Channel the tide had turned and was already flowing 
in with a speed that increased every minute; while 
over the sand we could see the barge, already out in 
the open estuary, heading to the west on the flood- 
tide at a good six knots. 

Poor Badger was frantic. With yearning eyes fixed 
on the dwindling barge, he cursed, entreated, en¬ 
couraged and made extravagant offers. He even took 
an oar and pulled with such desperate energy that he 
caught a crab and turned a neat back somersault into 
the fisherman’s lap. The two mariners pulled until 
their oars bent like canes; but still the sandy banks 
crept by, inch by inch, and ever the turbid water 
seemed to pour up the channel more and yet more 
swiftly. It was a fearful struggle and seemed to last 
for hours; and when, at last, the boat crawled out 
across the spit and the exhausted rowers rested on 
their oars, the sun was just setting and the barge had 
disappeared into the west. 

I was really sorry for Badger. His oversight in 
respect of the anchor was a very natural one for a 
landsman, and he had evidently taken infinite pains 
over the case and shown excellent judgment in keep¬ 
ing a close watch on the neighbourhood of Garbridge; 
and now, after all his care, it looked as if both the 
robbers and their booty had slipped through his 
fingers. It was desperately bad luck. 

“Well,” said the elder fisherman, “they’ve give us 


THE STOLEN INGOTS 223 

a run for our money; but they’ve got clear away. 
What’s to be done now, mister?” 

Badger had nothing to suggest excepting that we 
should pull or sail up the river in the hope of getting 
some assistance on the way. He was in the lowest 
depths of despair and dejection. But now, when For¬ 
tune seemed to have deserted us utterly, and failure 
appeared to be an accomplished fact, Providence 
intervened. 

A small steam vessel that had been approaching 
from the direction of the East Swin suddenly altered 
her course and bore down as if to speak us. The 
fisherman who had last spoken looked at her atten¬ 
tively for a few moments and then slapped his thigh. 
“Saved, by gum!” he exclaimed. “This’ll do your 
trick, master. Here comes a Customs cruiser.” 

Instantly the two fishermen bent to their oars to 
meet the oncoming craft, and in a few minutes we 
were alongside, Badger hailing like a bull of Bashan. 
A brief explanation to the officer in charge secured a 
highly sympathetic promise of help. We all scram¬ 
bled up on deck; the boat was dropped astern at the 
scope of her painter; the engine-room bell jangled 
merrily, and the smart, yacht-like vessel began to 
forge ahead. 

“Now then,” said the officer, as his craft gathered 
way, “give us a description of this barge. What is 
she like?” 

“She’s a small stumpy,” the senior fisherman ex¬ 
plained, “flying light; wants paint badly; steers with 


224 


THE BLUE SCARAB 


a wheel; green transom with Bluebell, Maldon, cut in 
and gilded. Seemed to be keeping along the north 
shore.” 

With these particulars in his mind, the officer ex¬ 
plored the western horizon with a pair of night-glasses, 
although it was still broad daylight. Presently he 
reported: “There’s a stumpy in a line with the Black- 
tail Spit buoy. Just take a look at her.” He handed 
his glasses to the fisherman, who, after a careful in¬ 
spection of the stranger, gave it as his opinion that 
she was our quarry. “Probably makin’ for Southend 
or Leigh,” said he, and added: “I’ll bet she’s bound 
for Benfieet Creek. Nice quiet place, that, to land 
the stuff.” 

Our recent painful experience was now reversed, 
for as our swift little vessel devoured the miles of 
water, the barge, which we were all watching eagerly, 
loomed up larger every minute. By the time we were 
abreast of the Mouse Lightship, she was but a few 
hundred yards ahead, and even through my glasses, 
the name Bluebell was clearly legible. Badger nearly 
wept with delight; the officer in charge smiled an 
anticipatory smile; the deck-hands girded up their 
loins for the coming capture and the plain-clothes men 
each furtively polished a pair of handcuffs. 

At length the little cruiser came fairly abreast of 
the barge—not unobserved by the two men on her 
deck. Then she sheered in suddenly and swept along¬ 
side. One hand neatly hooked a shroud with a grap¬ 
pling iron and made fast while a couple of preven- 


THE STOLEN INGOTS 


225 


tive officers, the plain-clothes men and the inspector 
jumped down simultaneously on to the barge’s deck. 
For a moment, the two bawley men were inclined to 
show fight; but the odds were too great. After a 
perfunctory scuffle they both submitted to be hand¬ 
cuffed and were at once hauled up on board the cruiser 
and lodged in the fore-peak under guard. Then the 
chief officer, the two fishermen and I jumped on board 
the barge and followed Badger down the companion 
hatch to the cabin. 

It was a curious scene that was revealed in that 
little cupboard-like apartment by the light of Badger’s 
electric torch. On each of the two lockers was 
stretched a man, securely lashed with lead-line and 
having drawn over his face a knitted stocking cap, 
while on the little triangular fixed table rested an iron- 
bound box which I instantly identified by my recol¬ 
lection of the description of the bullion case in the 
ship’s manifest. It was but the work of a minute to 
liberate the skipper and his son and send them up, 
wrathful but substantially uninjured, to refresh on the 
cruiser; and then the ponderous treasure-chest was 
borne in triumph by two muscular deck-hands, up the 
narrow steps, to be hoisted to the Government 
vessel. 

“Well, well,” said the inspector, mopping his face 
with his handkerchief, “all’s well that ends well; but 
I thought I had lost the men and the stuff that time. 
What are you going to do? I shall stay on board 
as this boat is going right up to the Custom House 


226 


THE BLUE SCARAB 


in London; but if you want to get home sooner, I 
dare say the chief officer will put you ashore at 
Southend.” 

I decided to adopt this course, and I was accord¬ 
ingly landed at Southend Pier with a telegram from 
Badger to his head-quarters; and at Southend I was 
fortunate enough to catch an express train which 
brought me to Fenchurch Street while the night was 
still young. 

When I reached our chambers, I found Thorndyke 
seated by the fire, serenely studying a brief. He 
stood up as I entered and, laying aside the brief, re¬ 
marked: 

“You are back sooner than I expected. How sped 
the chase? Did you catch the barge?” 

“Yes. We’ve got the men and we’ve got the bul¬ 
lion. But we very nearly lost both;” and here I gave 
him an account of the pursuit and the capture, to 
which he listened with the liveliest interest. “That 
Customs cruiser was a piece of sheer luck,” said he, 
when I had concluded. “I am delighted. This cap¬ 
ture simplifies the case for us enormously.” 

“It seems to me to dispose of the case altogether,” 
said I. “The property is recovered and the thieves 
are in custody. But I think most of the credit be¬ 
longs to Badger.” 

Thorndyke smiled enigmatically. “I should let him 
have it all, Jervis,” he said; and then, after a reflec¬ 
tive pause, he continued: “We will go round to Scot¬ 
land Yard in the morning to verify the capture. If 


THE STOLEN INGOTS 227 

the package agrees with the description in the bill of 
lading, the case, as you say, is disposed of.” 

“It is hardly necessary,” said I. “The marks were 
all correct and the Customs seals were unbroken— 
but still, I know you won’t be satisfied until you have 
verified everything for yourself. And I suppose you 
are right.” 

It was past eleven in the following forenoon when 
we invaded Superintendent Miller’s office at Scotland 
Yard. That genial officer looked up from his desk 
as we entered and laughed joyously. “I told you so, 
Badger,” he chuckled, turning to the inspector, who 
had also looked up and was regarding us with a foxy 
smile. “I knew the doctor wouldn’t be satisfied until 
he had seen it with his own eyes. I suppose that is 
what you have come for, sir?” 

“Yes,” was the reply. “It is a mere formality, of 
course, but, if you don’t mind-” 

“Not in the least,” replied Miller. “Come along, 
Badger, and show the doctor your prize.” 

The two officers conducted us to a room, which the 
superintendent unlocked, and which contained a small 
table, a measuring standard, a weighing machine, a 
set of Snellen’s test-types, and the now historic case 
of bullion. The latter Thorndyke inspected closely, 
checking the marks and dimensions by his notes. 

“I see you haven’t opened it,” he remarked. 

“No,” replied Miller. “Why should we? The Cus¬ 
toms seals are intact.” 



228 


THE BLUE SCARAB 


“I thought you might like to know what was in¬ 
side,” Thorndyke explained. 

The two officers looked at him quickly and the in¬ 
spector exclaimed: “But we do know. It was opened 
and checked at the Customs.” 

“What do you suppose is inside?” Thorndyke 
asked. 

“I don’t suppose,” Badger replied testily. “I know. 
There are four bars of gold inside.” 

“Well,” said Thorndyke, “as the representative of 
the Assurance Company, I should like to see the con¬ 
tents of that case.” 

The two officers stared at him in amazement, as 
also, I must admit, did I. The implied doubt seemed 
utterly contrary to reason. 

“This is scepticism with a vengeance!” said Mil¬ 
ler. “How on earth is it possible—but there, I sup¬ 
pose if you are not satisfied, we should be justi¬ 
fied-” 

He glanced at his subordinate, who snorted impa¬ 
tiently: “Oh, open it and let him see the bars. And 
then, I suppose, he will want us to make an assay of * 
the metal.” 

The superintendent retired with wrinkled brows and 
presently returned with a screwdriver, a hammer and 
a case-opener. Very deftly he broke the seals, ex¬ 
tracted the screws and prized up the lid of the case, 
inside which were one or two folds of thick canvas. 
Lifting these with something of a flourish, he dis¬ 
played the upper pair of dull, yellow bars. 



THE STOLEN INGOTS 


229 

“Are you satisfied now, sir?” demanded Badger. 
“Or do you want to see the other two?” 

‘Thorndyke looked reflectively at the two bars, and 
the two officers looked inquiringly at him (but one 
might as profitably have watched the expression on 
the face of a ship’s figurehead). Then he took from 
his pocket a folding foot-rule and quickly measured 
the three dimensions of one of the bars. 

“Is that weighing machine reliable?” he asked. 

“It is correct to an ounce,” the superintendent re¬ 
plied, gazing at my colleague with a slightly uneasy 
expression. “Why?” 

By way of reply Thorndyke lifted out the bar that 
he had measured and carrying it across to the ma¬ 
chine, laid it on the platform and carefully adjusted 
the weights. 

“Well?” the superintendent queried anxiously, as 
Thorndyke took the reading from the scale. 

“Twenty-nine pounds, three ounces,” replied Thorn¬ 
dyke. 

“Well?” repeated the superintendent. “What 
about it?” 

Thorndyke looked at him impassively for a mo¬ 
ment, and then, in the same quiet tone, answered: 
“Lead.” 

“What!” the two officers shrieked in unison, dart¬ 
ing across to the scale and glaring at the bar of metal. 
Then Badger recovered himself and expostulated, not 
without temper, “Nonsense, sir. Look at it. Can’t 
you see that it is gold?” 


230 


THE BLUE SCARAB 


“I can see that it is gilded,” replied Thorndyke. 

“But,” protested Miller, “the thing is impossible! 
What makes you think it is lead?” 

“It is just a question of specific gravity,” was the 
reply. “This bar contains seventy-two cubic inches 
of metal and it weighs twenty-nine pounds three 
ounces. Therefore it is a bar of lead. But if you 
are still doubtful, it is quite easy to settle the matter. 
May I cut a small piece off the bar?” 

The superintendent gasped and looked at his subor¬ 
dinate. “I suppose,” said he, “under the circum¬ 
stances—eh, Badger? Yes. Very well, Doctor.” 

Thorndyke produced a strong pocket-knife, and, 
having lifted the bar to the table, applied the knife to 
one corner and tapped it smartly with the hammer. 
The blade passed easily through the soft metal, and 
as the detached piece fell to the floor, the two officers 
and I craned forward eagerly. And then all possible 
doubts were set at rest. There was no mistaking the 
white, silvery lustre of the freshly-cut surface. 

“Snakes!” exclaimed the superintendent. “This is 
a fair knock-out! Why, the blighters have got away 
with the stuff, after all! Unless,” he added, with a 
quizzical look at Thorndyke, “you know where it is, 
Doctor. I expect you do.” 

“I believe I do,” said Thorndyke, “and if you care 
to come down with me to the London Docks, I think 
I can hand it over to you.” 

The superintendent’s face brightened appreciably. 
Not so Badger’s. That afflicted officer flung down the 


THE STOLEN INGOTS 


231 


chip of metal that he had been examining, and, turn¬ 
ing to Thorndyke, demanded sourly: “Why didn’t 
you tell us this before, sir? You let me go off 
chivvying that damn barge, and you knew all the 
time that the stuff wasn’t on board.” 

“My dear Badger,” Thorndyke expostulated, “don’t 
you see that these lead bars are essential to our case? 
They prove that the gold bars were never landed and 
that they are consequently still on the ship. Which 
empowers us to detain any gold that we may find on 
her.” 

“There, now, Badger,” said the superintendent, “it’s 
no use for you to argue with the doctor. He’s like a 
giraffe. He can see all round him at once. Let us 
get on to the Docks.” 

Having locked the room, we all sallied forth, and, 
taking a train at Charing Cross Station, made our way 
by Mark Lane and Fenchurch Street to Wapping, 
where, following Thorndyke, we entered the Docks 
and proceeded straight to a wharf near the Wapping 
entrance. Here Thorndyke exchanged a few words 
with a Customs official, who hurried away and pres¬ 
ently returned accompanied by an officer of higher 
rank. The latter, having saluted Thorndyke and cast 
a slightly amused glance at our little party, said: 
“They’ve landed that package that you spoke about. 
I’ve had it put in my office for the present. Will you 
come and have a look at it?” 

We followed him to his office behind a long row of 
sheds, where, on a table, was a strong wooden case, 


232 


THE BLUE SCARAB 


somewhat larger than the “bullion” case, while, on 
the desk a large, many-leaved document lay open. 

“This is your case, I think,” said the official; “but 
you had better check it by the manifest. Here is the 
entry: ‘One case containing seventeen and three- 
quarter dozen brass six-inch by three-eighths screw- 
bolts with nuts. Dimensions, sixteen inches by thir¬ 
teen by nine. Gross weight a hundred and nineteen 
pounds; net weight a hundred and thirteen pounds.’ 
Consigned to ‘Jackson and Walker, 593, Great Alie 
Street, London, E.’ Is that the one?” 

“That is the one,” Thorndyke replied. 

“Then,” said our friend, “we’ll get it open and have 
a look at those brass screw-bolts.” 

With a dexterity surprising in an official of such 
high degree, he had the screws out in a twinkling, and 
prizing up the lid, displayed a fold of coarse canvas. 
As he lifted this the two police officers peered eagerly 
into the case; and suddenly the eager expression on 
Badger’s face changed to one of bitter disappoint¬ 
ment. 

“You’ve missed fire this time, sir,” he snapped. 
“This is just a case of brass bolts.” 

“Gold bolts, Inspector,” Thorndyke corrected, 
placidly. He picked out one and handed it to the 
astonished detective. “Did you ever feel a brass bolt 
of that weight?” he asked. 

“Well, it certainly is devilish heavy,” the inspector 
admitted, weighing it in his hand and passing it on 
to Miller. 


THE STOLEN INGOTS 


233 


“Its weight, as stated on the manifest,” said Thorn- 
dyke, “works out at well over eight and a half ounces, 
but we may as well check it.” He produced from 
his pocket a little spring balance, to which he slung 
the bolt. “You see,” he said, “it weighs eight ounces 
and two-thirds. But a brass bolt of the same size 
would weigh only three ounces and four-fifths. There 
is not the least doubt that these bolts are gold; and 
as you see that their aggregate weight is a hundred 
and thirteen while the weight of the four missing bars 
is a hundred and thirteen pounds, two ounces, it is a 
reasonable inference that these bolts represent those 
bars; and an uncommonly good job they made of 
the melting to lose only two ounces. Has the con¬ 
signee’s agent turned up yet?” 

“He is waiting outside,” replied the officer, with a 
pleased smile, “hopping about like a pea in a frying- 
pan. I’ll call him in.” 

He did so, and a small, seedy man of strongly 
Semitic aspect approached the door with nervous cau¬ 
tion and a rather pale face. But when his beady eye 
fell on the open case and the portentous assembly in 
the office, he turned about and fled along the wharf as 
if the hosts of the Philistines were at his heels. 

“Of course it is all perfectly simple, as you say,” 
I replied to Thorndyke as we strolled back up Night¬ 
ingale Lane, “but I don’t see where you got your 
start. What made you think that the stolen case was 
a dummy?” 

“At first,” Thorndyke replied, “it was just a matter 


THE BLUE SCARAB 


234 

of alternative hypotheses. It was purely speculative. 
The robbery described by Halethorpe was a very 
crude affair. It was planned in quite the wrong way. 
Noting this, I naturally asked myself: What is the 
right way to steal a case of gold ingots? Now, the 
outstanding difficulty in such a robbery arises from 
the ponderous nature of the thing stolen, and the way 
to overcome that difficulty is to get away with the 
booty at leisure before the robbery is discovered—the 
longer the better. It is also obvious that if you can 
delude some one into stealing your dummy you will 
have covered up your tracks most completely; for if 
that some one is caught, the issues are extremely con¬ 
fused, and if he is not caught, all the tracks lead away 
from you. Of course, he will discover the fraud when 
he tries to dispose of the swag, but his lips are sealed 
by the fact that he has, himself, committed a felony. 
So that is the proper strategical plan; and, though it 
was wildly improbable, and there was nothing what¬ 
ever to suggest it, still the possibility that this crude 
robbery might cover a more subtle one, had to be 
borne in mind. It was necessary to make absolutely 
certain that the gold bars were really in the case when 
it left Bellhaven. I had practically no doubt that they 
were. Our visit to the Custom House was little more 
than a formality, just to give us an undeniable datum 
from which to make our start. We had to find some¬ 
body who had actually seen the case open and veri¬ 
fied the contents; and when we found that man—Mr. 
Byrne—it instantly became obvious that the wildly 


THE STOLEN INGOTS 


235 


improbable thing had really happened. The gold 
bars had already disappeared. I had calculated the 
approximate size of the real bars. They would con¬ 
tain forty-two cubic inches, and would be about seven 
inches by three by two. The dimensions given by 
Byrne—evidently correct, as shown by those of the 
case, which the bars fitted pretty closely—were im¬ 
possible. If those bars had been gold, they would 
have weighed two hundred pounds, instead of the hun¬ 
dred and thirteen pounds shown on his report. The 
astonishing thing is that Byrne did not observe the 
discrepancy. There are not many Customs officers 
who would have let it pass.” 

“Isn’t it rather odd,” I asked, “that the thieves 
should have gambled on such a remote chance?” 

“It is pretty certain,” he replied, “that they were 
unaware of the risk they were taking. Probably they 
assumed—as most persons would have done—that a 
case of bullion would be merely inspected and passed. 
Few persons realize the rigorous methods of the Cus¬ 
toms officers. But to resume: It was obvious that 
the ‘gold’ bars that Byrne had examined were dum¬ 
mies. The next question was, where were the real 
bars? Had they been made away with, or were they 
still on the ship? To settle this question I decided 
to go through the manifest and especially through the 
column of net weights. And there, presently, I came 
upon a package the net weight of which was within 
two ounces of the weight of the stolen bars. And 
that package was a parcel of brass screw-bolts—on a 


THE BLUE SCARAB 


236 

homeward-bound ship! But who on earth sends 
brass bolts from Africa to London? The anomaly 
was so striking that I examined the entry more 
closely, and then I found—by dividing the net weight 
by the number of bolts—that each of these little bolts 
weighed over half a pound. But, if this were so, those 
bolts could be of no other metal than gold or platinum, 
and were almost certainly gold. Also, their aggre¬ 
gate weight was exactly that of the stolen bars, less 
two ounces, which probably represented loss in melt¬ 
ing.” 

“And the scrivelloes,” said I, “and the gum copal 
and the kola nuts; what was their bearing on the 
inquiry? I can’t, even now, trace any connection.” 

Thorndyke cast an astonished glance at me, and 
then replied with a quiet chuckle: “There wasn’t any. 
Those notes were for the benefit of the shipping gen¬ 
tleman. As he would look over my shoulder, I had 
to give him something to read and think about. If I 
had noted only the brass bolts, I should have vir¬ 
tually informed him of the nature of my suspicions.” 

“Then, really, you had the case complete when we 
left Bellhaven?” 

“Theoretically, yes. But we had to recover the 
stolen case, for, without those lead ingots we could 
not prove that the gold bolts were stolen property, 
any more than one could prove a murder without evi¬ 
dence of the death of the victim.” 

“And how do you suppose the robbery was carried 
out? How was the gold got out of the ship’s strong¬ 
room?” 


THE STOLEN INGOTS 


237 


“I should say it was never there. The robbers, I 
suspect, are the ship’s mate, the chief engineer and 
possibly the purser. The mate controls the stowage 
of cargo, and the chief engineer controls the repair 
shop and has the necessary skill and knowledge to 
deal with the metal. On receiving the advice of the 
bullion consignment, I imagine they prepared the 
dummy case in agreement with the description. When 
the bullion arrived, the dummy case would be con¬ 
cealed on deck and the exchange made as soon as 
the bullion was put on board. The dummy would 
be sent to the strong-room and the real case carried 
to a prepared hiding-place. Then the engineer would 
cut up the bars, melt them piecemeal and cast them 
into bolts in an ordinary casting-flask, using an iron 
bolt as a model, and touching up the screw-threads 
with a die. The mate could enter the case on the 
manifest when he pleased, and send the bill of lading 
by post to the nominal consignee. That is what I 
imagine to have been the procedure.” 

Thorndyke’s solution turned out to be literally cor¬ 
rect. The consignee, pursued by Inspector Badger 
along the quay, was arrested at the dock gates and 
immediately volunteered King’s evidence. Thereupon 
the mate, the chief engineer and the purser of the 
steamship Labadi were arrested and brought to trial; 
when they severally entered a plea of guilty and de¬ 
scribed the method of the robbery almost in Thorn- 
dyke’s words. 


VII 


THE FUNERAL PYRE 

HORNDYKE did not often indulge in an 
evening paper, and was even disposed to view 



A that modern institution with some disfavour; 
whence it happened that when I entered our chambers 
shortly before dinner time with a copy of the Evening 
Gazette in my hand, he fixed upon the folded news- 
sheet an inquiring and slightly disapproving eye. 

“ ’Orrible discovery near Dartford,” I announced, 
quoting the juvenile vendor. 

The disapproval faded from his face, but the in¬ 
quiring expression remained. 

“What is it?” he asked. 

“I don’t know,” I replied; “but it seems to be some¬ 
thing in our line.” 

“My learned friend does us an injustice,” he re¬ 
joined, with his eye riveted on the paper. “Still, if 
you are going to make my flesh creep, I will try to 
endure it.” 

Thus invited, I opened the paper and read out as 
follows: 

“A shocking tragedy has come to light in a meadow 
about a mile from Dartford. About two o’clock this 
morning, a rural constable observed a rick on fire out 


THE FUNERAL PYRE 


239 


on the marshes near the creek. By the time he 
reached it the upper half of the rick was burning 
fiercely in the strong wind and, as he could do noth¬ 
ing alone, he went to the adjacent farm-house and 
gave the alarm. The farmer and two of his sons ac¬ 
companied the constable to the scene of the conflagra¬ 
tion, but the rick was now a blazing mass, roaring in 
the wind and giving out an intense heat. As it was 
obviously impossible to save any part of it, and as 
there were no other ricks near, the farmer decided to 
abandon it to its fate and went home. 

At eight o’clock he returned to the spot and found 
the rick still burning, though reduced to a heap of 
glowing cinders and ashes, and approaching it, he was 
horrified to perceive a human skull grinning out from 
the cindery mass. Closer examination showed other 
bones—all calcined white and chalky—and close to 
the skull a stumpy clay pipe. The explanation of 
this dreadful occurrence seems quite simple. The 
rick was not quite finished, and when the farm hands 
knocked off work they left the ladder in position. It 
is assumed that some tramp, in search of a night s 
lodging, observed the ladder, and climbing up it, made 
himself comfortable in the loose hay at the top of 
the rick, where he fell asleep with his lighted pipe 
in his mouth. This ignited the hay and the man must 
have been suffocated by the fumes without awakening 
from his sleep.” 

“A reasonable explanation,” was Thorndyke’s com¬ 
ment, “and quite probable; but of course it is pure 


240 


THE BLUE SCARAB 


hypothesis. As a matter of fact, any one of the three 
conceivable causes of violent death is possible in this 
case—accident, suicide or homicide.” 

“I should have supposed,” said I, “that we could 
almost exclude suicide. It is difficult to imagine a 
man electing to roast himself to death.” 

“I cannot agree with my learned friend,” Thorn- 
dyke rejoined. “I can imagine a case—and one of 
great medico-legal interest—that would exactly fit the 
present circumstances. Let us suppose a man, hope¬ 
lessly insolvent, desperate and disgusted with life, who 
decides to provide for his family by investing the few 
pounds that he has left in insuring his life heavily 
and then making away with himself. How would he 
proceed? If he should commit suicide by any of the 
orthodox methods he would simply invalidate his 
policy. But now, suppose he knows of a likely rick; 
that he provides himself with some rapidly-acting 
poison, such as potassium cyanide—he could even use 
prussic acid if he carried it in a rubber or celluloid 
bottle, which would be consumed in the fire; that he 
climbs on to the rick; sets fire to it, and as soon as 
it is fairly alight, takes his dose of poison and falls 
back dead among the hay. Who is to contest his 
family’s claim. The fire will have destroyed all traces 
of the poison, even if they should be sought for. But 
it is practically certain that the question would never 
be raised. The claim would be paid without demur.” 

I could not help smiling at this calm exposition of 
a practicable crime. “It is a mercy, Thorndyke,” I 


THE FUNERAL PYRE 241 

remarked, “that you are an honest man. If you were 
not-” 

“I think,” he retorted, “that I should find some 
better means of livelihood than suicide. But with 
regard to this case: it will be worth watching. The 
tramp hypothesis is certainly the most probable; but 
its very probability makes an alternative hypothesis 
at least possible. No one is likely to suspect fraudu¬ 
lent suicide; but that immunity from suspicion is a 
factor that increases the probability of fraudulent 
suicide. And so, to a less extent, with homicide. We 
must watch the case and see if there are any further 
developments.” 

Further developments were not very long in ap¬ 
pearing. The report in the morning paper disposed 
effectually of the tramp theory without offering any 
other. “The tragedy of the burning rick,” it said, “is 
taking a somewhat mysterious turn. It is now clear 
that the unknown man, who was assumed to have 
been a tramp, must have been a person of some social 
position, for careful examination of the ashes by the 
police have brought to light various articles which 
would have been carried only by a man of fair 
means. The clay pipe was evidently one of a pair 
of which the second one has been recovered—probably 
silver mounted and carried in a case, the steel frame 
of which has been found. Both pipes are of the 
1 Burns Cutty’ pattern and have neatly scratched on 
the bowls the initials ‘R. R.’ The following articles 
have also been found:—Remains of a watch, prob- 


242 


THE BLUE SCARAB 


ably gold, and a rather singular watch-chain, having 
alternate links of platinum and gold. The gold links 
have partly disappeared, but numerous beads of gold 
have been found, derived apparently from the watch 
and chain. The platinum links are intact and are 
fashioned of twisted square wire. A bunch of keys, 
partly fused; a rock crystal seal, apparently from a 
ring; a little porcelain mascot figure, with a hole for 
suspension—possibly from the watch-chain—and a 
number of artificial teeth. In connection with the 
latter, a puzzling and slightly sinister aspect has been 
given to the case by the finding of an upper dental 
plate by a ditch some two hundred yards from the 
rick. The plate has two gaps and, on comparison 
with the skull of the unknown man, these have been 
found by the police surgeon to correspond with two 
groups of remaining teeth. Moreover, the artificial 
teeth found in the ashes all seem to belong to a lower 
plate. The presence of this plate, so far from the 
scene of the man’s death, is extremely difficult to ac¬ 
count for.” 

As Thorndyke finished reading the extract he looked 
at me as if inviting some comment. 

“It is a most remarkable and mysterious affair,” 
said I, “and naturally recalls to my mind the hypo¬ 
thetical case that you suggested yesterday. If that 
case was possible then, it is actually probable now. 
It fits these new facts perfectly, not only in respect 
of the abundant means of identification, but even to 
this dental plate—if we assume that he took the 


THE FUNERAL PYRE 


243 

poison as he was approaching the rick, and that the 
poison was of an acrid or irritating character which 
caused him to cough or retch. And I can think of 
no other plausible explanation.” 

“There are other possibilities,” said Thorndyke, 
“but fraudulent suicide is certainly the most probable 
theory on the known facts. But we shall see. As 
you say, the body can hardly fail to be identified at 
a pretty early date.” 

As a matter of fact it was identified in the course 
of that same day. Both Thorndyke and I were busily 
engaged until evening in the courts and elsewhere and 
had not had time to give this curious case any con¬ 
sideration. But as we walked home together, we en¬ 
countered Mr. Stalker of the Griffin Life Assurance 
Company pacing up and down King’s Bench Walk 
near the entry of our chambers. 

“Ha!” he exclaimed, striding forward to meet us 
near the Mitre Court gateway, “you are just the very 
men I wanted to see. There is a little matter that I 
want to consult you about. I shan’t detain you long.” 

“It won’t matter much if you do,” said Thorndyke. 
“We have finished our routine work for the day and 
our time is now our own.” He led the way up to our 
chambers, where, having given the fire a stir, he drew 
up three arm-chairs. 

“Now, Stalker,” said he. “Warm your toes and tell 
us your troubles.” 

Mr. Stalker spread out his hands to the blaze and 
began reflectively: “It will be enough, I think, if I 


THE BLUE SCARAB 


244 

give you the facts—and most of them you probably 
know already. You have heard about this man whose 
remains were found in the ashes of a burnt rick? 
Well, it turns out that he was a certain Mr. Reginald 
Reed, an outside broker, as I understand; but what 
is of more interest to us is that he was a client of 
ours. We have issued a policy on his life for three 
thousand pounds. I thought I remembered the name 
when I saw it in the paper this afternoon, so I looked 
up our books, and there it was, sure enough.” 

“When was the policy issued?” Thorndyke asked. 

“Ah!” exclaimed Stalker. “That’s the exasperating 
feature of the case. The policy was issued less than 
a year ago. He has only paid a single premium. So 
we stand to drop practically the whole three thou¬ 
sand. Of course, we have to take the fat with the 
lean, but we don’t like to take it in such precious 
large lumps.” 

“Of course you don’t,” agreed Thorndyke. “But 
now: you have come to consult me—about what?” 

“Well,” replied Stalker, “I put it to you: isn’t there 
something obviously fishy about the case? Are the 
circumstances normal? For instance, how the devil 
came a respectable city gentleman to be smoking his 
pipe in a haystack out in a lonely meadow at two 
o’clock in the morning, or thereabouts?” 

“I agree,” said Thorndyke, “that the circumstances 
are highly abnormal. But there is no doubt that the 
man is dead. Extremely dead, if I may use the ex¬ 
pression. What is the point that you wish to raise?” 


THE FUNERAL PYRE 


245 


“I am not raising any point/’ replied Stalker. “We 
should like you to attend the inquest and watch the 
case for us. Of course, in our policies, as you know, 
suicide is expressly ruled out; and if this should turn 
out to have been a case of suicide-” 

“What is there to suggest that it was?” asked 
Thorndyke. 

“What is there to suggest that it wasn’t?” retorted 
Stalker. 

“Nothing,” rejoined Thorndyke. “But a negative 
plea is of no use to you. You will have to furnish 
positive proof of suicide, or else pay the claim.” 

“Yes, I realize that,” said Stalker, “and I am not 
suggesting—but there, it is of no use discussing the 
matter while we know so little. I leave the case in 
your hands. Can you attend the inquest?” 

“I shall make it my business to do so,” replied 
Thorndyke. 

“Very well,” said Stalker, rising and putting on his 
gloves, “then we will leave it at that; and we couldn’t 
leave it in better case.” 

When our visitor had gone I remarked to Thorn¬ 
dyke: “Stalker seems to have conceived the same idea 
as my learned senior—fraudulent suicide. 

“It is not surprising,” he replied. “Stalker is a 
shrewd man and he perceives that when an abnormal 
thing has happened we may look for an abnormal 
explanation. Fraudulent suicide was a speculative 
possibility yesterday: to-day, in the light of these new 
facts, it is the most probable theory. But mere proba- 



246 THE BLUE SCARAB 

bilities won’t help Stalker. If there is no direct evi¬ 
dence of suicide—and there is not likely to be any— 
the verdict will be Death by Misadventure, and the 
Griffin Company will have to pay.” 

“I suppose you won’t do anything until you have 
heard what transpires at the inquest?” 

“Yes,” he replied. “I think we should do well to 
go down and just go over the ground. At present we 
have the facts at third hand, and we don’t know what 
may have been overlooked. As to-morrow is fairly 
free I propose that we make an early start and see 
the place ourselves.” 

“Is there any particular point that you want to 
clear up?” 

“No; I have nothing definite in view. The circum¬ 
stances are compatible with either accident, suicide or 
homicide, with an undoubted leaning towards suicide. 
But, at present, I have a completely open mind. I 
am, in fact, going down to Dartford in the hope of 
getting a lead in some definite direction.” 

When we alighted at Dartford Station on the fol¬ 
lowing morning, Thorndyke looked enquiringly up and 
down the platform until he espied an inspector, when 
he approached the official and asked for a direction 
to the site of the burnt rick. 

The official glanced at Thorndyke’s canvas-covered 
research-case and at my binocular and camera as he 
replied with a smile: “You are not the first, by a long 
way, that has asked that question. There has been 


247 


THE FUNERAL PYRE 

a regular procession of Press gentlemen that way this 
morning. The place is about a mile from here. You 
take the foot-path to Joyce Green and turn off towards 
the creek opposite Temple Farm. This is about where 
the rick stood,” he added, as Thorndyke produced his 
one-inch ordnance map and a pencil, “a few yards 
from that dyke.” 

With this direction and the open map we set forth 
from the station, and taking our way along the un¬ 
frequented path soon left the town behind. As we 
crossed the second stile, where the path rejoined the 
road, Thorndyke paused to survey the prospect. 
“Stalker’s question,” he remarked, “was not unreason¬ 
able. This road leads nowhere but to the river, and 
one does rather wonder what a city man can have 
been doing out on these marshes in the small hours 
of the morning. I think that will be our objective, 
where you see those men at work by the shepherd’s 
hut, or whatever it is.” 

We struck off across the level meadows, out of 
which arose the red sails of a couple of barges, creep¬ 
ing down the invisible creek; and as we approached 
our objective the shepherd’s hut resolved itself into 
a contractor’s office van, and the men were seen to 
be working with shovels and sieves on the ashes of 
the rick. A police inspector was superintending the 
operations, and when we drew near he accosted us 
with a civil inquiry as to our business. 

Thorndyke presented his card and explained that 
he was watching the case in the interests of the Griffin 


THE BLUE SCARAB 


248 

Assurance Company. “I suppose,” he added, “I shall 
be given the necessary facilities?” 

“Certainly,” replied the officer, glancing at my col¬ 
league with an odd mixture of respect and suspicion; 
“and if you can spot anything that we’ve overlooked, 
you are very welcome. It’s all for the public good. 
Is there anything in particular that you want to see?” 

“I should like to see everything that has been re¬ 
covered so far. The remains of the body have been 
removed, I suppose?” ^ 3 

“Yes, sir. To the mortuary. But I have got all 
the effects here.” 

He led the way to the office—a wooden hut on low 
wheels—and unlocking the door, invited us to enter. 
“Here are the things that we have salved,” he said, 
indicating a table covered with white paper on which 
the various articles were neatly set out, “and I think 
it’s about the lot. We haven’t come on anything fresh 
for the last hour or so.” 

Thorndyke looked over the collection thoughtfully; 
picked up and examined successively the two clay 
pipes—each with the initials “R.R.” neatly incised on 
the bowl—the absurd little mascot figure, so incon¬ 
gruous with its grim surroundings and the tragic cir¬ 
cumstances, the distorted keys, the platinum chain- 
links to several of which shapeless blobs of gold 
adhered, and the crystal seal; and then, collecting the 
artificial teeth, arranged them in what appeared to be 
their correct order, and compared them with the den¬ 
tal plate. 


THE FUNERAL PYRE 


249 


“I think,” said he, holding the latter in his fingers, 
“that as the body is not here, I should like to secure 
the means of comparison of these teeth with the skull. 
There will be no objection to that, I presume?” 

“What did you wish to do?” the inspector asked. 

“I should like to take a cast of the plate and a wax 
impression of the loose teeth. No damage will be 
done to the originals, of course.” 

The inspector hesitated, his natural, official tend¬ 
ency to r. se permission apparently contending with 
a desire to see with his own eyes how the famous 
expert carried out his mysterious methods of research. 
In the end the latter prevailed and the official sanction 
was given, subject to a proviso. “You won’t mind my 
looking on while you do it?” 

“Of course not,” replied Thorndyke. “Why 
should I?” 

“I thought that perhaps your methods were a sort 
of trade secret.” 

Thorndyke laughed softly as he opened the 
research-case. “My dear Inspector,” said he, “the 
people who have trade secrets are those who make 
a profound mystery of simple processes that any 
schoolboy could carry out with once showing. That 
is the necessity for the secrecy.” 

As he was speaking he half-filled a tiny aluminium 
saucepan with water, and having dropped into it a 
couple of cakes of dentist’s moulding composition, put 
it to heat over a spirit-lamp. While it was heating 
he greased the dental plate and the loose teeth, and 


THE BLUE SCARAB 


250 

prepared the little rubber basin and the other ap¬ 
pliances for mixing the plaster. 

The inspector was deeply interested. With almost 
ravenous attention he followed these proceedings, and 
eagerly watched Thorndyke roll the softened compo¬ 
sition into the semblance of a small sausage and press 
it firmly on the teeth of the plate; peered into the 
plaster tin, and when the liquid plaster was mixed 
and applied, first to the top and then to the lower sur¬ 
face of the plate, not only observed the process closely 
but put a number of very pertinent questions. 

While the plaster and composition were setting 
Thorndyke renewed his inspection of the salvage 
from the rick, picking out a number of iron boot pro¬ 
tectors which he placed apart in a little heap. 

Then he proceeded to roll out two flat strips of 
softened composition, into one of which he pressed 
the loose teeth in what appeared to be their proper 
order, and into the other the boot protectors—eight 
in number—after first dusting the surface with pow¬ 
dered French chalk. By this time the plaster had 
set hard enough to allow of the mould being opened 
and the dental plate taken out. Then Thorndyke, 
having painted the surfaces of the plaster pieces with 
knotting, put the mould together again and tied it 
firmly with string, mixed a fresh bowl of plaster and 
poured it into the mould. 

While this was setting Thorndyke made a careful 
inventory, with my assistance, of the articles found 
in the ashes and put a few discreet questions to the 


THE FUNERAL PYRE 


251 

inspector. But the latter knew very little about the 
case. His duty was merely to examine and report on 
the rick for the information of the coroner. The in¬ 
vestigation of the case was evidently being conducted 
from head-quarters. There being no information to 
be gleaned from the officer we went out and inspected 
the site of the rick. But here, also, th re was nothing 
to be learned; the surface of the ground was now laid 
bare and the men who were working with the sieves 
reported no further discoveries. We accordingly re¬ 
turned to the hut, and as the plaster had now set hard 
Thorndyke proceeded with infinite care to open the 
mould. The operation was a complete success, and 
as my colleague extracted the cast—a perfect replica, 
in plaster, of the dental plate—the inspector’s admi¬ 
ration was unbounded. “Why,” he exclaimed, “ex¬ 
cepting for the colour you couldn’t tell one from the 
other; but all the same, I don’t quite see what you 
want it for.” 

“I want it to compare with the skull,” replied 
Thorndyke, “if I have time to call at the mortuary. 
As I can’t take the original plate with me, I shall 
need this copy to make the comparison. Obviously, 
it is most important to make sure that this is Reed’s 
plate and not that of some other person. By the 
way, can you show us the spot where the plate was 
picked up?” 

“Yes,” replied the inspector. “You can see the 
place from here. It was just by that gate at the cross¬ 
ing of the ditch.” 


252 


THE BLUE SCARAB 


“Thank you, Inspector,” said Thorndyke. “I think 
we will walk down and have a look at the place.” He 
wrapped the new cast in a soft cloth, and having re¬ 
packed his research case, shook hands with the officer 
and prepared to depart. 

“You will notice, Jervis,” he remarked as we walked 
towards the gate, “that this denture was picked up at 
a spot beyond the rick—farther from the town, I 
mean. Consequently, if the plate is Reed’s, he must 
have dropped it while he was approaching the rick 
from the direction of the river. It will be worth while 
to see if we can find out whence he came.” 

“Yes,” I agreed. “But the dropping of the plate is 
a rather mysterious affair. It must have happened 
when he took the poison—assuming that he really did 
poison himself; but one would have expected that he 
would wait until he got to the rick to take his dose.” 

“We had better not make too many assumptions 
while we have so few facts,” said Thorndyke. He put 
down his case beside the gate, which guarded a bridge 
across a broad ditch, or drainage dyke, and opened 
his map. 

“The question is,” said he, “did he come through 
this gate or was he only passing it. This dyke, you 
see, opens into the creek about three-quarters of a 
mile farther down. The probability is, therefore, that 
if he came up from the river across the marshes he 
would be on this side of the ditch and would pass 
the gate. But we had better try both sides. Let us 
leave our things by the gate and explore the ground 


THE FUNERAL PYRE 


253 

for a few hundred yards, one on either side of the 
ditch. Which side will you take?” 

I elected to take the side nearer the creek and, 
having put my camera down by the research case, 
climbed over the padlocked gate and began to walk 
slowly along by the side of the ditch, scanning the 
ground for footprints showing the impression of boot- 
protectors. At first the surface was far from favour¬ 
able for imprints of any kind, being, like that im¬ 
mediately around the gate, covered with thick turf. 
About a hundred and fifty yards down, however, I 
came upon a heap of worm-casts on which was plainly 
visible the print of a heel with a clear impression of 
a kidney-shaped protector such as I had seen in the 
hut. Thereupon I hailed Thorndyke and, having 
stuck my stick in the ground beside the heel-print, 
went back to meet him at the gate. 

“This is rather interesting, Jervis,” he remarked, 
when I had described my find. “The inference seems 
to be that he came from the creek—unless there is 
another gate farther down. We had better have our 
compo impressions handy for comparison.” He 
opened his case and taking from it the strip of com¬ 
position—now as hard as bone—on which were the 
impressions of the boot-protectors, slipped it into his 
outer pocket. We then took up the case and the 
camera and proceeded to the spot marked by my 
stick. 

“Well,” said Thorndyke, “it is not very conclusive, 
seeing that so many people use boot-protectors, but 


THE BLUE SCARAB 


2 54 

it is probably Reed’s footprint. Let us hope that we 
shall find something more distinctive farther on.” 

We resumed our march, keeping a few yards apart 
and examining the ground closely as we went. For 
a full quarter of a mile we went on without detecting 
any trace of a footprint on the thick turf. Suddenly 
we perceived ahead of us a stretch of yellow mud 
occupying a slight hollow, across which the creek had 
apparently overflowed at the last spring tide. When 
we reached it we found that the mud was nearly dry, 
but still soft enough to take an impression; and the 
surface was covered with a maze of footprints. 

We halted at the edge of the patch and surveyed 
the complicated pattern; and then it became evident 
that the whole group of prints had been produced by 
two pairs of feet, with the addition of a row of sheep- 
tracks. 

“This seems to raise an entirely new issue,” I re¬ 
marked. 

“It does,” Thorndyke agreed. “I think we now 
begin to see a definite light on the case. But we must 
go cautiously. Here are two sets of footprints, of 
which one is apparently Reed’s—to judge by the boot- 
protectors—while the other prints have been made by 
a man, whom we will call X, who wore boots or shoes 
with rubber soles and heels. We had better begin 
by verifying Reed’s.” He produced the composition 
strip from his pocket, and, stooping over one pair of 
footprints, continued: “I think we may assume that 
these are Reed’s feet. We have on the compo strip 


THE FUNERAL PYRE 


255 

impressions of eight protectors from the rick, and on 
each footprint there are four protectors. Moreover, 
the individual protectors are the same on the compo 
and on the footprints. Thus the compo shows two 
pairs of half-protectors, two single edge-pieces, and 
two kidney-shaped protectors; while each footprint 
shows a pair of half-protectors on the outside of the 
sole, a single one on the inside and a kidney-shaped 
piece on the heel. Furthermore, in both cases the 
protectors are nearly new and show no appreciable 
signs of wear. The agreement is complete.” 

“Don’t you think,” said I, “that we ought to take 
plaster records of them?” 

“I do,” he replied, “seeing that a heavy shower or 
a high tide would obliterate them. If you will make 
the casts I will, meanwhile, make a careful drawing 
of the whole group to show the order of imposition.” 

We fell to work forthwith upon our respective 
tasks, and by the time I had filled four of the clearest 
of the footprints with plaster, Thorndyke had com¬ 
pleted his drawing with the aid of a set of coloured 
pencils from the research case. While the plaster was 
setting he exhibited and explained the drawing. 

“You see, Jervis, that there are four lines of prints 
and a set of sheep-tracks. The first in order of time 
are these prints of X, drawn in blue. Then come the 
sheep, which trod on X’s footprints. Next comes 
Reed, alone and after some interval, for he has trodden 
both on the sheep-tracks and on the tracks of X. 
Both men were going towards the river. Then we 


THE BLUE SCARAB 


256 

have the tracks of the two men coming back. This 
time they were together, for their tracks are parallel 
and neither treads into the prints of the other. Both 
tracks are rather sinuous as if the men were walking 
unsteadily, and both have trodden on the sheep-tracks 
and on the preceding tracks. Next, we have the 
tracks of X going alone towards the river and tread¬ 
ing on all the others excepting number four, which 
are the tracks of X coming from the river and turning 
off towards that gate, which opens on to the road. 
The sequence of events is therefore pretty clear. 

“First, X came along here alone to some destination 
which we have yet to discover. Later—how much 
later we cannot judge—came Reed, alone. The two 
men seem to have met, and later returned together, 
apparently the worse for drink. That is the last we 
see of Reed. Next comes X, walking back—quite 
steadily, you notice—towards the river. Later, he 
returns; but this time, for some reason—perhaps to 
avoid the neighbourhood of the rick—he crosses the 
ditch at that gate, apparently to get on the road, 
though you see by the map that the road is much the 
longer route to the town. And now we had better 
get on and see if we can discover the rendezvous to 
and from which these two men went and came.” 

As the plaster had now set quite hard I picked up 
the casts, and when I had carefully packed them in 
the case we resumed our progress riverwards. I had 
already noticed, some distance ahead, the mast of 
what looked like a small cutter yacht standing up 


THE FUNERAL PYRE 


257 

above the marshes, and I now drew Thorndyke’s at¬ 
tention to it. But he had already observed it and, 
like me, had marked it as the probable rendezvous 
of the two men. In a few minutes the probability be¬ 
came a certainty, for a bend in the creek showed us 
the little vessel—with the name Moonbeam newly 
painted on the bow—made fast alongside a small 
wooden staging; and when we reached this the bare 
earth opposite the gangway was seen to be covered 
with the footprints of both men. 

“I wonder,” said I, “which of them was the owner 
of the yacht.” 

“It is pretty obvious, I think,” said Thorndyke, 
“that X was the owner if either of them was. He 
came to the yacht alone, and he wore rubber-soled 
shoes such as yachtsmen favour; whereas Reed came 
when the other man was there, and he wore iron boot- 
protectors, which no yacht owner would do if he had 
any respect for his deck-planks. But they may have 
had a joint interest; appearances suggest that they 
were painting the woodwork when they were here 
together, as some of the paint is fresh and some of it 
old and shabby.” He gazed at the yacht reflectively 
for some time and then remarked: “It would be in¬ 
teresting—and perhaps instructive—to have a look at 
the inside.” 

“It would be a flagrant trespass, to put it mildly,” 
said I. 

“It would be more than trespass if that padlock is 
locked,” he rejoined. “But we need not take a 


THE BLUE SCARAB 


258 

pedantic view of the legal position. My learned friend 
has a serviceable pair of glasses and commands an 
unobstructed view of a mile or so; and if he main¬ 
tains an observant attitude while I make an inspec¬ 
tion of the premises any trifling irregularity will be 
of no consequence.” As he spoke he felt in his pocket 
and produced an instrument which our laboratory 
assistant, Polton, had made from a few pieces of stiff 
steel wire, and which was euphemistically known as 
a smoker’s companion. With this appliance in his 
hand he dropped down on to the yacht’s deck, and 
after a quick look round, tried the padlock. Finding 
it locked he proceeded to operate on it with the 
smoker’s companion, and in a few moments it fell 
open, when he pushed back the sliding hatch and 
stepped down into the little cabin. 

His exploration did not take long. In ,a few min¬ 
utes he reappeared and climbed the short ladder to 
the staging. “There isn’t much to see,” he reported, 
“but what there is is highly suggestive. If you slip 
down and have a look round, I think you will have 
no difficulty in forming a plausible reconstruction of 
the recent events. You had better take the camera. 
There is light enough for a time exposure.” 

I handed him the glasses, and dropping on to the 
deck, stepped down through the open hatch into the 
cabin. It was an absurd little cave, barely four feet 
high from the floor to the coach-roof, open to the 
forepeak and lighted by a little skylight and two port¬ 
holes. Of the two sleeping berths, one had evidently 


THE FUNERAL PYRE 


259 

been used as a seat, while the other appeared to have 
been slept in, to judge by the indented pillow and the 
tumbled blankets, left just as the occupant had 
crawled out of them. But the whole interior was in 
a state of squalid disorder. Paint-pots and unwashed 
brushes lay about the floor, in company with a couple 
of whisky-bottles—one empty and one half-full—two 
tumblers, a pair of empty siphons and a litter of play¬ 
ing cards scattered broadcast and evidently derived 
from two packs. It was, as Thorndyke had said, easy 
to reconstruct the scene of sordid debauchery that 
the light of the two candles—each in its congealed 
pool of grease—must have displayed on that night of 
horror whose dreadful secret had been disclosed by 
the ashes of the rick. But I could see nothing that 
would enable me to give a name to the dead man’s 
mysterious companion. 

When I had completed my inspection and taken a 
photograph of the interior, I rejoined Thorndyke, who 
then descended and replaced the padlock on the closed 
hatch, relocking it with the invaluable smoker’s com¬ 
panion. 

“Well, Jervis,” said he, as we turned our faces to¬ 
wards the town, “it seems as if we had accomplished 
our task, so far as Stalker is concerned. It is still 
possible that this was a case of suicide, but it is no 
longer probable. All the appearances point to homi¬ 
cide. I think my learned friend will agree with me 
in that.” 

“Undoubtedly,” I replied. “And to me there is a 


2 6o THE BLUE SCARAB 

strong suggestion of premeditation. I take it that X, 
the owner of the yacht, enticed Reed out here, pos¬ 
sibly to prepare for a cruise; that the two men worked 
at the repainting while the daylight lasted and then 
spent the evening drinking and gambling. The fact 
that they used two packs of cards suggests that 
they played for pretty heavy stakes. Then, I think, 
Reed became drunk and X offered to see him safely 
off the marshes. It is evident that X was not drunk, 
because, although both tracks appear unsteady when 
the men were walking together, the tracks of X, re¬ 
turning to the yacht are quite steady and straight. 
I should say that the actual murder took place just 
after they had got over the gate; that Reed’s false 
teeth fell out while his body was being dragged to the 
rick, and that this was unnoticed by X owing to the 
darkness. Then X dragged the body up the ladder 
and laid it in the middle of the rick at the top, set 
fire to the rick—probably on the lee side—and at 
once made off back to the yacht. There he passed 
the night, and in the morning he returned to the town 
along the road, giving the neighbourhood of the rick 
a wide berth. That is my reading of the evidence.” 

“Yes,” said Thorndyke, “that seems to be the in¬ 
terpretation of the facts. And now all that remains 
is to give a name to the mysterious X, and I should 
think that will present no difficulties.” 

“Are you proposing to inspect the remains at the 
mortuary?” I asked. 

“No,” he replied. “It would be interesting, but it 


THE FUNERAL PYRE 


261 


is not necessary. We have all the available data for 
identification, and our concern is now not with Reed 
but with X. We had better get back to London.” 

On our arrival at the station, we found the book¬ 
stall keeper in the act of sticking up a placard of the 
evening paper on which was the legend: 

“Rick tragedy; Sensational development ” 

We immediately provided ourselves each with a 
copy of the paper, and sitting down on a seat, pro¬ 
ceeded to read the heavily-leaded report. 

“A new and startling aspect has been given to the 
rick tragedy by some further inquiries that the police 
have made. It seems that the dead man, Reed, was 
a member of the firm of Reed and Jarman, outside 
brokers, and it now transpires that his partner, Walter 
Jarman, is also missing. There has been no one at 
the office this week, but the caretaker states that on 
Monday evening at about eight o’clock, he saw Mr. 
Jarman let himself into the office with his key (the 
rick was first seen to be on fire at two o’clock on 
Monday morning). It appears that three cheques, 
payable to the firm and endorsed by Jarman, were 
paid into the bank—Patmore’s—by the first post, on 
Tuesday morning, and that, also on Tuesday .morning, 
Jarman purchased a parcel of diamonds of just over 
a thousand pounds in value from a diamond merchant 
in Hatton Garden, who accepted a cheque in payment 
after telephoning to the bank. It further appears that 
on the previous Saturday morning, Reed and Jarman 
visited the bank together and drew out in cash prac- 


262 


THE BLUE SCARAB 


tically their whole balance, leaving only thirty-two 
pounds. The diamond merchant’s cheque was met by 
the cheques that had just been paid in. It is prema¬ 
ture to make any comments, but we may expect some 
strange disclosures at the inquest, which will be held 
at Hartford the day after to-morrow.” 

“I assume,” said I, “that the identity of X is no 
longer a mystery. It looks as if these two men had 
agreed to realize their assets and abscond, and had 
then spent the night gambling for the swag, and oddly 
enough, Reed appears to have been the winner, for 
otherwise there would have been no need to murder 
him.” 

“That is so,” Thorndyke agreed, “assuming that X 
is Jarman, which is probable, though not certain. 
But we mustn’t go beyond our facts, and we mustn’t 
construct theories from newspaper reports. I think 
we had better call at Scotland Yard on our way home 
and verify those particulars.” 

The report and our own observations occupied us 
during the journey to London, though our discussion 
produced no further conclusions. As soon as we ar¬ 
rived at Charing Cross, Thorndyke sprang out of the 
train, and emerging from the station, walked swiftly 
towards Whitehall. 

Our visit was fortunately timed, for as we ap¬ 
proached the entrance to the headquarters, our old 
friend, Superintendent Miller, came out. He smiled 
as he saw us and halted to utter the laconic query: 
“Rick Case?” 


THE FUNERAL PYRE 


263 

“Yes,” replied Thorndyke. “We have come to 
verify the particulars given in the evening paper. 
Have you seen the report?” 

“Yes; and you may take it as correct. Anything 
else?” 

“I should have liked to look over a series of the 
cheques drawn by the firm. The last two, I suppose, 
are inaccessible?” 

“Yes. They will be at the bank, and we couldn’t 
inspect them without an order of the Court. But, as 
to the others, if they are at the office, I think you 
could see them. I’ll come along with you now if you 
like, and have a look round myself. Our people are 
in possession.” 

We at once closed with the superintendent’s offer 
and proceeded with him by the Underground Railway 
to the Mansion House, from whence we made our 
way to Queen Victoria Street, where Reed and Jar¬ 
man had their offices. A sergeant was in charge at 
the moment, and to him the superintendent addressed 
himself. 

“Have you found any returned cheques?” 

“Yes, sir,” replied the sergeant; “lots of ’em. 
We’ve been through them all.” 

As he spoke he produced several bundles of 
cheques and laid them on a desk, the drawers of which 
all stood open. 

“Well,” said Miller, “there they are, doctor. I 
don’t know what you want to find out, but I expect 
you do.” He placed a chair by the desk, and as 


THE BLUE SCARAB 


264 

Thorndyke sat down and proceeded to turn the 
cheques over, he watched him with politely-suppressed 
curiosity. 

“It appears,” said Thorndyke, “as if these two men 
had mixed up their private affairs with the business 
account. Here, for instance, is a cheque drawn by 
Reed for the Picardy Wine Company. But that com¬ 
pany could hardly have been a client. And this one 
of Jarman’s for the Secretary of the St. John’s 
Nursing Home must be a private cheque, and so I 
should say are these two for F. Waller, Esq., 
F.R.C.S., and for Andrew Darton, Esq., L.D.S. They 
are drawn for professional men and both are—like 
the Nursing Home cheque—stated in even amounts 
of guineas, whereas the business cheques are in un¬ 
even amounts of pounds, shillings and pence.” 

“I think you are right, sir,” said Miller. “The 
business seems to have been conducted in a very 
casual manner. And just look at those signatures! 
Never twice alike. The banks hate that sort of thing, 
naturally. When a customer signs in the signature 
book he has given a specimen for reference and he 
ought to keep to it strictly. A man who varies his 
signature is asking for trouble.” 

“He is,” Thorndyke agreed, as he rapidly entered 
a few particulars of the cheques in his note-book; 
“particularly in the case of a firm with a staff of 
clerks.” 

He stood up, and having pocketed his notebook, 
held out his hand. 


THE FUNERAL PYRE 265 

I am very much obliged to you, Superintendent,” 
he said. 

“Seen all that you wanted to see?” Miller asked. 

“Thank you, yes,” Thorndyke replied. 

“I should very much like to know what you have 
seen, Miller rejoined; to which my colleague replied 
by waving his hand towards the cheques, as he turned 
to go. 

“I don?t Quite see the bearing of those cheques on 
our inquiry,” I said, as we took our way homeward 
along Cheapside. 

“It is not very direct,” Thorndyke replied; “but 
the cheques help us to understand the characters of 
these two men and their relations with one another; 
which may be very necessary when we come to the 
inquest.” 

During the following day I saw very little of Thorn¬ 
dyke, for our excursion to Dartford had put our work 
somewhat in arrear and we had to secure a free day 
for the inquest on the morrow. We met at dinner 
after the day’s work, but, beyond settling the pro¬ 
gramme for the next day, nothing of importance 
passed with reference to the “Rick Case.” 

The opening phases of the inquest, though of thrill¬ 
ing interest to the numerous spectators and Press 
men, did not particularly concern us. The evidence 
of the rural constable, the farmer and the police in¬ 
spector—with whom Thorndyke had a little confiden¬ 
tial talk and apparently surprised the officer consid- 


266 


THE BLUE SCARAB 


erably—merely amplified what we knew already. Of 
more interest was that of a local dentist who testified 
to having examined the dental plate and to having 
compared it with the skull of the dead man. “The 
plate and the jaw of deceased,” he said, “agree com¬ 
pletely. The jaw contains five natural teeth in two 
groups, and the plate has two spaces which exactly 
correspond to those two groups of teeth. I have tried 
the plate on the jaw and have no doubt whatever that 
it belonged to deceased.” 

“That is a very important fact,” Thorndyke re¬ 
marked to me as the witness retired. “It is the indis¬ 
pensable link in the chain.” 

“But surely it was obvious?” said I. 

“No doubt,” he replied. “But now it is proved 
and in evidence.” 

I was somewhat puzzled by Thorndyke’s remark, 
but the appearance of a new witness forbade discus¬ 
sion. Mr. Arthur Gerrard was an alert-looking, rather 
tall man, with bushy, Mephistophelian eyebrows and 
a small, dark moustache, who wore a pair of large 
bifocal spectacles, and to whom a small mole at the 
corner of the mouth imparted the effect of a perma¬ 
nent one-sided smile. 

“It was on your information,” said the coroner, 
“that the identity of the deceased was established.” 

“Yes,” replied the witness, who spoke with a slight, 
but perceptible, Irish accent. “I saw the description 
in the papers of the things that had been found in 
the rick and at once recognized them as Reed’s. I 


THE FUNERAL PYRE 


267 

knew deceased intimately and had often noticed his 
peculiar watch-chain and the little china mascot and 
seen him smoking the clay pipe with his initials 
scratched on it; and I knew that he wore false 
teeth.” 

“Did you meet him frequently?” 

“Oh, yes. For more than a year he was my partner 
in business, and we remained friends after I had dis¬ 
solved the partnership.” 

“Why did you dissolve the partnership?” 

“I had to. Reed was impossible in a business sense. 
He gambled incessantly in stocks and I had to pay his 
losses. I lent him, for this purpose, at one time and 
another, over two thousand pounds. He gave me bills 
for the loans, but he was never able to meet them, 
and in the end, when we dissolved, I got him to insure 
his life for three thousand pounds and to draw up a 
document making his debt to me the first charge on 
his estate in the event of his death.” 

“Had you ever any reason to suppose that he con¬ 
templated suicide?” 

“None whatever. After he left me, he entered into 
partnership with a Mr. Walter Jarman, and whenever 
I met him, he seemed to be quite happy and con¬ 
tented, though I gathered that he was still gambling 
a good deal. I saw him a week ago to-day and he 
then told me that he proposed to take a short yacht¬ 
ing holiday with his partner, who owned a small 
cutter. That was the last time that I saw him alive.” 

As the witness was about to retire, Thorndyke rose, 


268 


THE BLUE SCARAB 


and having obtained the coroner’s permission to cross- 
examine, asked: 

“You have spoken of a yacht. Do you know what 
her name is and where she has been kept lately?” 

“Her name is the Moonbeam, and I believe Jarman 
kept her somewhere in the Thames, but I don’t know 
where.” 

“And as to Jarman himself: what do you know 
about him, as to his character, for instance?” 

“I knew him very slightly. He appeared to be 
rather a dissipated man. Drank a good deal, I should 
say, and I think he was a bit of a gambler.” 

“Do you know if he was a heavy smoker?” 

“He didn’t smoke at all, but he was an inveterate 
snuff-taker.” 

At this point the foreman of the jury interposed 
with the audible remark that “he didn’t see what this 
had to do with the inquiry,” and the coroner looked 
dubiously at Thorndyke; but as my colleague sat 
down, the objection was not pursued. 

The next witness was the caretaker of the building 
in which Reed and Jarman’s office was situated. His 
evidence was to the effect that on the previous Mon¬ 
day evening at about eight o’clock, he saw Mr. Jarman 
let himself into the office with his key. “I don’t know 
how long he stayed there,” he continued, in reply to 
the coroner’s question. “I had finished my work and 
was going up to my rooms at the top of the building. 
I didn’t see him again.” 


THE FUNERAL PYRE 


269 

“Did you notice anything unusual in his appear¬ 
ance?” asked Thorndyke, rising to cross-examine. 
“Was his face at all flushed, for instance?” 

“I couldn't say. I was going up the stairs and I 
just looked back over my shoulder when I heard him. 
His face was turned away from me.” 

“But you had no difficulty in recognizing him?” 

“No: I should have known him a mile off. He had 
his overcoat on, and it is a very peculiar overcoat— 
light brown with a sort of greenish check. You 
couldn’t possibly mistake it.” 

“What should you say was Mr. Jarman’s height?” 

“About five feet nine or ten, I should say.” 

Here the foreman of the jury again interposed. 
“Aren’t we wasting time,, sir?” he inquired impa¬ 
tiently. “These details about Jarman may be very 
important to the police, but they don’t concern us. 
We are inquiring into the death of Mr. Reginald 
Reed.” 

The coroner looked deprecatingly at Thorndyke 
and remarked: “There is some truth in what the fore¬ 
man says.” 

“I submit, sir,” replied Thorndyke, “that there is 
no truth in it at all. We are not inquiring into the 
death of Reginald Reed, but into that of a man whose 
remains were found in a burned rick.” 

“But the body has been identified as that of Regi¬ 
nald Reed.” 

“Then,” said Thorndyke, “I submit that it has been 


270 


THE BLUE SCARAB 


wrongly identified. I suggest that the body is that 
of Walter Jarman and I am prepared to produce wit¬ 
nesses who will prove that it is.” 

“But,” exclaimed the coroner, “we have just heard 
the evidence of a witness who states that he saw Jar¬ 
man alive eighteen hours after the rick was fired.” 

“I beg your pardon, sir,” said Thorndyke. “We 
have heard the witness say that he saw Jarman’s over¬ 
coat. He expressly stated that he did not see the 
man’s face.” 

The coroner hastily conferred with the jury—who 
openly scoffed at Thorndyke’s suggestion—and then 
said: “I find what you say perfectly incredible and so 
do the jury. It is utterly irreconcilable with the facts. 
You had better call your witnesses and let us dispose 
of this extraordinary suggestion.” 

Thorndyke bowed to the coroner and called Mr. 
Andrew Darton; whereupon a middle-aged man of 
markedly professional aspect came forward and, hav¬ 
ing been sworn, gave evidence as follows: 

“I am a dental surgeon. A little over two years 
ago, Mr. Walter Jarman was under my care. I ex¬ 
tracted some loose teeth from both jaws and made 
him two plates—an upper and a lower.” 

“Could you identify those plates?” 

“Yes. I have with me the plaster model on which 
those plates were made.” He opened a bag and pro¬ 
duced a plaster cast of a pair of jaws fitted with a 
brass hinge so that the jaws could be opened and shut. 
On the upper jaw were two groups of teeth separated 


THE FUNERAL PYRE 


271 

by a space of bare gums, while the lower jaw bore a 
single group of four front teeth. 

“This model,” the witness explained, “is an exact 
replica of the patient’s jaws, and the two plates were 
actually moulded on it.” He picked up the dental 
plate from the table, and amidst a hush of breathless 
expectancy, opened the mouth of the model and ap¬ 
plied the plate to the upper jaw. At a glance, it was 
obvious that it fitted perfectly. The two groups of 
the plaster teeth slipped exactly into the spaces on 
the plate, making a complete row of teeth. Then the 
witness covered the lower gums with strips of plastic 
wax and taking the loose teeth from the table, attached 
them to the wax; and again the correspondence was 
evident. The teeth thus applied exactly filled the 
vacant spaces. 

“Can you now identify that plate?” Thorndyke 
asked. 

“Yes,” was the reply. “I am quite certain that this 
is the plate I made for Mr. Jarman and that those 
loose teeth are from his lower plate.” 

Thorndyke looked at the coroner, who nodded em¬ 
phatically. “This evidence seems perfectly conclu¬ 
sive,” he admitted. “What do you say, gentlemen?” 
he added, turning to the jury. 

There was no doubt as to their sentiments. With 
one voice they declared their complete conviction. 
Had they not seen the demonstration with their own 
eyes? 

“And now, sir,” said the coroner, “as you appear 


THE BLUE SCARAB 


272 

to know more than any one else about this case, and 
as it is perfectly incomprehensible to me, and prob¬ 
ably also to the jury, I suggest that you give us an 
explanation. And you had better make it a sworn 
statement, so that it can go into the depositions.” 

“Yes,” Thorndyke agreed, “especially as I have 
some evidence to give.” He was accordingly sworn 
and then proceeded to make the following statement: 

“The first thing that struck me on reading the re¬ 
port of this case, was the very remarkable character 
of the objects found in the ashes of the rick. They 
included objects composed of platinum, of pipe-clay, 
of iron and of porcelain—all substances practically 
indestructible by fire. And these imperishable objects 
were all highly distinctive and easily identifiable, and 
two of them actually bore the initials of their owner. 
There was almost a suggestion of the body having 
been prepared for identification after burning. This 
mere suggestion, however, gave place to definite sus¬ 
picion when I saw the dental plate. That plate pre¬ 
sented a most striking discrepancy. Here it is, sir, 
and you see that it is a clean polished plate of red 
vulcanite, with not a trace of stain or discoloration. 
But associated with that plate were two clay pipes. 
Now the man who smokes a clay pipe is not only— 
as a rule—a heavy smoker, but he smokes strong and 
dark-coloured tobacco. And if he wears a dental 
plate, that plate becomes encrusted with a black de¬ 
posit which is very difficult to remove. There is, as 
you see, no trace of any such deposit or of any tobacco 


THE FUNERAL PYRE 


2 73 

stain in the interstices of the teeth. It appeared to 
be almost certainly the plate of a non-smoker. But 
if that were so, it could not be Reed’s. But it had 
been ascertained by the police surgeon that it fitted 
the jaw of the skull and undoubtedly belonged to the 
burned body. Consequently if the plate was not 
Reed’s plate, the skull was not Reed’s skull, and the 
body was not Reed’s body. But the watch-chain was 
Reed’s, the pipes were his and the mascot was his. 
That is to say that the very identifiable and fireproof 
property of Reed was associated with the burned body 
of some other person; that, in other words, the body 
of some unknown person had been deliberately pre¬ 
pared to counterfeit the body of Reed. This offered 
a further suggestion and raised a question. The sug¬ 
gestion was that the unknown person had been mur¬ 
dered—presumably somewhere near the spot where 
the dental plate was found. The question was—What 
was the object of causing the body to counterfeit that 
of Reed? 

“Now, I knew, from the assurance company, that 
Reed had insured his life for three thousand pounds. 
Therefore, somebody stood to gain three thousand 
pounds by his death. The question was—Who was 
that somebody? I proceeded to make certain inves¬ 
tigations on the spot;” and here Thorndyke gave a 
summary of our discoveries on the marsh and on the 
yacht. “It thus appeared,” he continued, “that there 
were two men on the marshes that night, going to¬ 
wards the rick. One of them was the person whose 


THE BLUE SCARAB 


274 

body was found in the ashes; the other, who went 
back alone to the yacht, was presumably the person 
who stood to gain three thousand pounds by Reed’s 
death.” 

“Have you formed any opinion as to who that per¬ 
son was?” the coroner asked. 

“Yes,” replied Thorndyke. “I have very little 
doubt that he was Reginald Reed.” 

“But,” exclaimed the coroner, “we have heard in 
evidence that it was Mr. Arthur Gerrard who stood 
to gain the three thousand pounds!” 

“Precisely,” said Thorndyke; and for awhile he 
and the coroner looked at one another without speak¬ 
ing. 

Suddenly the latter cast a searching look around 
the court. “Where is Mr. Gerrard?” he demanded. 

“He left the court about ten minutes ago,” said 
Thorndyke; “and the police inspector left immediately 
afterwards. I had advised him not to lose sight of 
Mr. Gerrard.” 

“Then I take it that you suspect Gerrard of being 
in collusion with Reed?” 

“I suspect that Arthur Gerrard and Reginald Reed 
are one and the same person.” 

As Thorndyke made this statement, a murmur of 
astonishment arose from the jurymen and the spec¬ 
tators. The coroner, after a few moments’ puzzled 
reflection, remarked: “You are not forgetting that 
Reed’s caretaker was present while Gerrard was giv- 


THE FUNERAL PYRE 


275 


ing his evidence?” Then, turning to the caretaker, 
he asked: “What do you say? Was that Mr. Reed 
who gave evidence under the name of Gerrard?” 

The caretaker, who had evidently been thinking 
furiously, was by no means confident. “I should say 
not,” he replied, “unless he was made up a good deal. 
He was certainly about the same height and build 
and colour; but he had a moustache, whereas Mr. 
Reed was clean-shaved; he had a mole on his face, 
which Mr. Reed hadn't; he had bushy eyebrows, 
whereas Mr. Reed had hardly any eyebrows to speak 
of; and he wore spectacles, which Mr. Reed didn’t, 
and he spoke like an Irishman, whereas Mr. Reed 
was English. Still it is possible-” 

Before he could finish, the door rattled to a heavy 
concussion. Then it flew open, and Mr. Gerrard 
staggered into the room, thrust forward by the police 
inspector. His appearance was marvellously changed, 
for he had lost his spectacles, and one of his eyebrows 
had disappeared, as had also the mole and a portion 
of the built-up moustache. The caretaker started up 
with an exclamation, but at this moment Gerrard, 
with a violent effort, wrenched himself free. The in¬ 
spector sprang forward to recapture him. But he was 
too late. The prisoner’s hand flew upwards; there 
was a ringing report; and Arthur Gerrard—or Regi¬ 
nald Reed—fell back across a bench with a trickle 
of blood on his temple and a pistol still clutched in 
his hand. 



276 


THE BLUE SCARAB 


“And so,” said Stalker, when he called on us the 
next day for details, “it was a suicide after all. Very 
lucky, too, seeing that there was no provision in the 
policy for death by judicial hanging.” 


THE END 



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